LOKRE2: Nosgoth
by birkinsmith-88
Summary: The prequel sequel to LOKRE2 my best fanfic The Researchers open a gateway to a new world with the intention of procuring a new sample to develop into a bioweapon and end up with more than they ever could have guessed.
1. Prologue

This is both the sequel and prequel to LOKRE2: found in the Resident Evil section (I'd put a link to it, but it makes things go crazy. Just go to my account and find it on there.

I've put this in the LOK section rather than the Resident Evil section because it is set in Nosgoth, and though the characters are a mix of LOK and RE (most Researchers mentioned in the Resident Evil books, and seeing as most RE fans probably haven't read them, if you don't know anything about RE, you don't have a thing to worry about)

The most important note of all is that I've tried to write it so that you don't have to be a fan of LOK or RE to enjoy it, after all, the characters from both series are learning about each other and in the process, you should too.

Prologue

It had been about a month since the Mansion lab disaster and yet they all still remained silent in a mourning disbelief every day, feeling the accusing stares of the uniforms they passed on the way to their S.T.A.R.S office. They blamed _them_ for what happened back in that old house. To be honest, Chris really couldn't blame them for their accusations. The stories about zombies and monsters roaming an abandoned mansion had been hard to swallow even for _them_, and _they_ were caught up in it all…

Only five of the thirteen S.T.A.R.S remained after that night in the Spencer Estate; Barry Burton, Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Rebecca Chambers and Brad Vickers, and since then Rebecca Chambers had gone totally missing. Chris told Jill that she'd probably went into hiding for fear of what Umbrella, the company responsible for the disaster, would do to them or maybe even went to take out another facility by herself. Either way, she wasn't safe.

Chris had teamed up with the eighteen year old Bravo Rookie during that most unusual mission in the depths of Raccoon Forest at the previously mentioned Spencer Estate. It started out as a fairly routine mission; 'take out a bunch of cannibal nut jobs running around the forest area' – that's all – but after the Bravo chopper set off – Rebecca aboard – they had to make a forced landing and they didn't hear from them for over a whole day. They went in to investigate but quickly fell to the same fate as the Bravos. A chase through the woods by a pack of hungry zombie-hounds had taken one of their comrades from them and driven them into the abandoned Spencer Mansion.

Long story short, they got out barely with their lives in tact, but discovered that 'Umbrella', the worlds biggest pharmaceutical company to date, had spawned the monsters that crept inside its 'Mansion Facility'. They discovered Umbrella even had contacts inside their own R.P.D S.T.A.R.S organisation in the form of Alpha team captain Albert Wesker, but such was his treachery that he died trying to steal some of Umbrellas monster embryos for whatever reason at the hands of the biggest and most fierce monster there, the Tyrant (the zombie-making virus was called the 'T' or Tyrant-virus - get it?). The Mansion was blown to bits while the remaining S.T.A.R.S escaped in their chopper.

Since that horrifying night about four weeks ago, the dust still hadn't settled over how many 'elite S.T.A.R.S' had died in what Umbrella confirmed was a chemical leak of radioactive material - or something like that - at the Mansion. They covered up the whole thing and simply disregarded the remaining S.T.A.R.S stories as mindless drivel they'd concocted either in their horror-stricken delirium at their loss, or simply because they'd gone utterly mad for whatever reason. Chris was a man who knew his own mind, though. There was no questioning the existence of the monsters he had encountered on that night, and every time he closed his eyes, it was as if he was back there, the aura of dread surrounding and filling him, afraid to keep them closed but not really wanting to open them up again.

Chris had given up trying to alert the citizens of Raccoon. They didn't want to know. Umbrella supplied a ridiculous amount of the jobs in the city; - they _OWNED_ this city - and its people weren't about to bite the hand that fed them. Chris grasped over a short time - especially after Rebecca's disappearance – that it could be very dangerous for him to go around telling all that he knew about the incident to just anyone who walked in from the street. Umbrella didn't want people of Raccoon city to wake up from their pleasant and wholly ignorant dream to take in and believe what Chris and the others were telling them. The sword of Damocles was hanging over their heads and it was only a matter of time before Umbrella cut the thread…. - unless the got the hell out of town…. But then one day, something very odd happened….

Chris was in a certain bar in town that he frequented (possibly 'J's Bar', for he and Barry Burton, another Alpha team member and Chris' oldest friend, went out their to drink quite a bit but Chris drank in many bars in town so it could have been anywhere) when a strange looking man – a very strange looking man indeed – approached him as he slouched miserably in one of the booths. The man clearly wasn't Raccoon city press or R.P.D, but Chris didn't really think he looked like the type who'd work for Umbrella. But his hair – his skin- as white as a ghosts' – genuinely ashen as it would be if all blood had been drained from a human body. Lips apparently black in colour, even for the dim light of the bar he could tell they weren't any form of gothic makeup either. It almost looked as if he was _supposed_ to be that way… The most defining feature of this peculiar man was his eyes, cruel sharp and golden - like a monsters – piercing down at Chris' slouched self like a disdainful nobleman at someone beneath him. He wore a strange red shawl-like fabric wrapped around his chest that was held together with black leather straps with highly toned muscular chest peaking out from gaps in the creases of the haphazardly bound fabric….. and his metal boots were killer. He should tell Jill where he got them.

"Am I addressing Chris Redfield of the R.P.D S.T.A.R.S Alpha team?" He asked him in his hauntingly silky and regal voice.

Chris removed his mouth from the bottle and sighed heavily, feeling as if he had been through a similar event dozens of times over.

"And who the hell are you?" There was no hostility in his voice, simply fatigue. He felt like he'd shouted constantly for about a week to the piss taking press and simply couldn't find the strength to tell him to fuck off and print his story in some other screwy conspiracy magazine (judging by his appearance).

"I am Kain." He said to him in a powerful and commanding statement. Chris expected thunderclaps to boom out after the way he said that name but when they didn't sound he didn't waste his time by waiting around for long.

"Kain – who?" Chris asked in a half-assed attempt at convocation.

There was a pause.

"…..I am Kain." He said again, only angrier and more slowly through clenched teeth, narrowing his golden eyes like an irritated panther growling low and harsh to intimidate its prey. Chris wasn't very intimidated, though. He just thought the guy sounded stupid.

"Take a seat then pal." He huffed out. Kain didn't move – he simply glowered down at him, unamused. "….or you could stand…." Chris rubbed his face with his fingerless-gloved hand, feeling the thin and invisible layer of filth caked on his features in a disgusting collection of street grime. He needed a shower…. "So what do you people want to know now? About the zombies? About the 'Hunters'? What do you care? The S.T.A.R.S are nuts, remember?"

Kain didn't speak.

Chris frowned angrily up at him, tired of the 'hard-man' game he was playing and slammed his bottle crossly down on the table, bitter-sweet-tasting foam frothing up out of the bottle and over his hand. He didn't care." Look-What the fuck do you want? I've had press, R.P.D and even the damn public bothering me 24/7 over this Mansion thing and I think I've just about gotten sick with yelling my lungs out at them, trying to get them to take me seriously so what makes you think I'll tell a shady character like you anything when you could be with Umbrella?"

"Umbrella has completed the synthesis of the G-virus."

Chris paused, dread filling his heart. The Mansion had experienced a T-virus leak that had turned all of its unfortunate scientist-victims into zombies…. What was this new G-virus he spoke of?

"Where did you find this out?" Chris enquired, finally becoming interested in this bizarre man.

"I have seen it in action myself and its effects – I can assure you – are well beyond that of the T-virus."

Chris found himself no longer caring for whom he worked for, but filling with fear at the prospects that Umbrella still hadn't learnt its lesson. The man possessed information…. Information that chilled Chris to the very core of his being and that could only mean a disaster.

"Tell me more."

"I will not." Kain stated clearly. "First you must tell me of your ordeal, then I will divulge to you what I know."

Chris frowned. "How can I trust you?"

"How can I trust _YOU_?"

Chris chuckled but Kain didn't react. What happened at the Mansion was old news, no matter how of his friends died in there. What threat could this G-virus posed to his surviving friends?

And so, finding himself in an awkward position, he gave in and told Kain everything he had learnt at the Mansion about Umbrella, the T-virus and the monsters he faced. It took much longer to fully explain it all than he thought it would, making him realise just how much he could make Umbrella hurt if he acted upon this information and fought against them.

Kain seemingly listened to the whole thing with the patience and the understanding of a man who had experienced similar combat, which lead Chris to wonder about the man even more but more startling to him than the mans ever controlled mental state was the information he told unto him in return.

Kain spoke of a disaster deep in the heart of the city that threatened to consume the entire town: A Mad scientist protecting his lifes' work with his dieing actions and using the G-virus to change into a monster of…. apocalyptic proportions. What's more, he spoke of a strange pestilence spreading throughout the city – through the old the weak and the sick as if it were the black death itself, and Kain feared that it was only a matter of time before what happened to the scientists at the Mansion lab occurred to the citizens of the city. Chris was horrified. This man was telling…. This man was telling him that the city was becoming zombified!

The creepy man disappeared almost as suddenly as he approached him, leaving Chris filled with yet more unanswered question that he ever had before. What a headache. He'd sent a fax of to – whomever – to get this information confirmed but the fax hadn't come back yet. It had been bothering him ever since.

Brad Vickers – Alpha pilot and the best damn computer expert they'd had – was engrossed in whatever he was receiving in those large earphones that seemed to take up most of his head as he wore them. For whatever reason, he was monitoring two units of R.P.D officers sent in to take out – whomever – in a supposedly abandoned old apartment block awaiting demolition. Barry Burton and Jill Valentine were the only other besides him in the room – other than the fleeing Rebecca – they were all that was left of the miniature army of Raccoons' finest. Their own meagre company was enough to depress their 'never say die' attitude. The pokey place was more silent as it had been for years. It was so cramp they had to share desks with the Bravos… but that wasn't much of a problem now seeing as all but one of them are dead….

-"Hello? Team B? I'm not…." Brad screwed around with the multitude of knobs and buttons, seemingly in a panic. "….I'm not reading you. What's going on down there?" He didn't seem to be getting much of an answer. "Team A; Team B is failing to respond to hails - check it out now." He paused…. And for a disturbingly long period of time. "Team A?" His voice becoming frantic, he fondled with the wires leading to and from his headphones in an uneasy panic. "Team A _RESPOND_!" Standing now, Brad hammered down on the control panel as if the buttons could change whatever situation was going on at that old apartment block. Chris, Jill and Barry looked on exchanging fearful glances. It felt like a repeat of when they lost contact with the Bravos….

Brad took off and set down his headset, turning to them with a look of defeat mixed with panicked fear.

"The air's dead." He told them. "No static or anything like that…. "

"How many hostiles _were_ in that building?" Barry growled, his tall and stocky appearance threatening the naturally weak, twitchy and easily scared Brad Vickers. Barry was normally a nice big bear of a man but the possible death of their R.P.D friends enraged him deeply. The guys at the top much have conducted a revolting act of negligence to send two units in on a possible gang of armed suspects, at least they had to be to take out that many men without them raising he alarm to Brad and the other men.

"There should be just the one!" He squealed in a pathetic attempt to divert the fury directed at him: He was just the messenger – there was nothing he could have done.

"No one man could have done all that!" Barked Barry. "Especially not someone without any military training, and even then I doubt they'd bother operating _alone_ in some derelict apartment!"

"Don't you think I know that?" He again cried.

-"Who were they going in for?" Enquired Chris calmly, trying to bring some sanity back into the situation.

"They think the guy's the one that's been killing his victims bleeding out almost every drop of blood in their bodies." Brad said to him, still panicked but speaking softly now, or possibly feeling slightly ill at what he was describing; Brad hated the sight of blood.

"Then lets go in." Chris stated. Jill and Barry looked at him in a panic.

-"We can't just go rushing in without any orders!" Jill yelled, balling her gloved hands to fists.

"We won't receive any orders ever again, thanks to Umbrella." Chris replied, his voice low and somewhat mournful. He was right. Someone at the top had fucked up by sending them in and no one was going to go in to save any survivors. It reminded them of their predicament back at the Mansion. They didn't want their last mission to be the failure of the Spencer Estate….

The only one sure of what they were doing was Chris, but Jill, Barry and even the cowardly Brad Vickers didn't protest against his seemingly reckless idea. It was a pleasant surprise, but he didn't question why; they'd learnt the hard way that sometimes following orders lost lives. Chris couldn't help but smile to see the piggish Police Chief Brian Irons race out onto the heliport as they ascended in furious annoyance, shaking his fists seemingly comically into the air, inaudible over the whirling blades of the chopper.

The destination would be reached in less than a minuet from the air, helping to prevent the attackers escape and counteract the obvious speed the blood-draining killer possessed to take out two units without detection….. assuming they were dead….. It was possible they had a hostage situation on their hands, which made things all that more annoying seeing as they were only left with four team members with very little skills between them. Chris and Barry were great shots and were more fighters than negotiators. Jill was much stealthier seeing as her father was the legendary Dick Valentine, a notorious cat burglar back in the day and had educated his daughter to follow in his footsteps, before he got caught and encouraged her to follow the straight and narrow. Her skills were elsewhere. And as for Brad Vickers, if he were put under such an emotionally stressful situation he would most likely faint….. or vomit, or suffer from an extreme nosebleed or maybe even all three simultaneously. Their only hope for success was to hit the killer hard and fast and take him utterly by surprise. If he was expert enough to do what he did so quickly and silently then he'd most certainly expect them to take their time and arrive on the scene as cautiously as possible. A surprise attack so early on in the game would be normally out of the question.

The roar of the helicopter overhead would no doubt alert the criminal to their prescience, so Brad was quick in dropping Barry off at the roof, Jill on the fire escape about half way down, and Chris on the ground. They jumped out of the chopper and instantly went to work, searching the building separately for the killer and any signs of the two missing units.

Something was nagging in Chris' mind. Two units was a lot for a man to take out in a number of seconds without detection, even if he was some kind of special agent caught with his pants down. The skill suggested government agent, anyway. Terrorist rarely operated alone, and the skill he had to have possessed was too great for just some delusional man campaigning his politics with blood. He had to be someone powerful and well trained, like a Green Beret or-

- A Bio-weapon. What if the creature was an escaped Umbrella bio-weapon? That would make much more sense than any of the other theories, considering the circumstances of the attack.

Chris radioed his theories to the others in the team, keeping his voice low and his weapon trained in both hands, splitting his concentration between the dialogue and his sweep of the lowest levels of the run down apartment block.. The set was hands free, the radio device itself strapped to his chest and a small black mike protruding from the earpiece in his right ear.

"I wondered about that too, Chris." Jill whispered back from somewhere else inside the building through her radio. "Maybe something that got into the city from Raccoon Forest?"

"It's unlikely that it would go on this long without being detected." Responded Barry Burton. "After we destroyed the Mansion and brought what they were doing to light, Umbrella would have made sure there was nothing incriminating left loose running about, inside the city or out."

"Do you have any better ideas?" Asked Chris, trying his hardest not to sound sarcastic or bitter to his old friend. There was an unwavering pause. For a glimmer of a moment, Chris feared – whatever was loose in the building – had gotten to his team mates.-

-"Guys, are you alright?" Jill broke the silence over the com. She was just as frightened as Chris about each other.

"I'm fine." Reassured Chris. "The silence was starting to get to me too, Jill."

"But we should discontinue communications until we find something of significance." Said Barry, brining the situation back down to earth. For a moment there, it felt as if this was turning back into another Mansion incident for them, not know what monster could be lurking in the shadows, and that each moment could be your last and that your comrades could be dying in the next room and you would be none the wiser. That night was over, and had been for a month. There was no sense in reliving it in your own mind.

Chris didn't switch off his radio, but kept perfectly silent as he took in his surrounding more thoroughly now that his concentration was back on the mission. Dark and dingy hallways with peeling wallpaper and sequential wooden doors were all that there was on this lowest level. Somehow, the entire building appeared as if it had been coloured purely in black, white and shades of depressing greys from the lack of light and contrast. Chris didn't dare flick on the light switch for fear of alerting their quarry…. if it – he – whatever – could be called that….

He passed a water cooler that had been strangely vandalised. It stuck out in Chrises' mind because if this was the hideout of a man, then why would they deliberately slash open their supply of stored water with what looked like some sort of cutting implement? There were four parallel slashes, one above the other in something resembling a claw-like pattern…. Chris tried his hardest to resist jumping to the conclusion that it was a bio-weapon, but found it too terrifying to ignore. Hunters – a monster type from the Mansion labs – had the claws and the intelligence to do something like this. A thirsty Hunter came along, slashed it open and fed on the liquid, either that or it was a guy who had something against water….

Chris realised he could hear something moving. Before he could recognise the sound, Jill's voice greeted him in his ear.

"Someone's in the Elevator."

"The nerve." Barry said, almost involuntarily. No one takes the elevator in a situation like this. It leaves you too open to attack when you come out on a floor. The stairs wasn't much better, but it at least gave you fair warning if someone was coming. Chris was on the ground floor and - would you believe – from the faint blinking light at the end of the corridor where the elevator must have been enveloped into shadow; it was heading straight down to the ground level – This level.

Chris readied his weapon into the blackness of the long, narrow corridor, the shadow itself seemingly a dark haze that threatened to smother him like a cloud of evil, and from the dark, a noise could be heard. The elevator doors were opened, and for a time, there was nothing once more. Chris dared to hope the elevator had been sent down on a dummy run to distract them. –

-Until the outline of a man drifted ghostly through the dark cloud of shadow, the being itself seemingly part of the darkness itself. And as more of him formed from the blackness of night with powerful, godlike strides, Chris recognised him.

It was Kain.

He hadn't noticed him yet as he progressed down the corridor towards him, regarding a red fluid dripping from what could only have been his claws. Chris couldn't move. For a moment, his training left him and he was a cowering child again. He was quick to react when he first saw the zombies; they were inhuman enough for you to realise what they were before they got you, but he was a man, and he was licking the blood of those innocent cops placidly from his – his claws – without any emotion for the pain they felt as they died or the revulsion at what he was wetting his dark lips with. The cops had gone in after a man who drained the blood of his victims, and here he was, licking himself clean like an animal, yet with an air of prestige about him that changed his seemingly feral appearance to something quite divine. The man adored himself and had good reason to.

- His yellow eyes were upon Chris and he froze. Chris remembered himself, and into his radio he alerted the others.

Quickly he said; "Hostile sighted. Caucasian male, long white hair, distinctive appearance – you can't miss him." Already the man had turned back and dashed for the stairs, eyes fixed on Chris up until the point he span. Chris gave chase in time to see the door to the stairs slam closed. Despite following him, all he had to go on was the sounds of a man in heavy metal boots racing up the stairs a number of floors above him, then suddenly a female shout, not in terror, but an aggressive cry for the man to freeze. Jill was a few floors up and had rushed into the stairwell from her floor in time to see the monstrous man race past her. She gave chase.-

"Barry, he's heading for the roof – hold your position and alert Brad! Get him to look out for him from the air!" Chris called into the radio and then followed Jill with all the speed and strength he could muster.

Less that a couple of seconds of chase and there was the smashing of broken glass for somewhere not too far above Chris in the spiralling stairwell.

"He's heading for the fire escape!" Cried Jill, her voice echoing about the narrow ever-towering blackness. Sprinkled of glass rained down on Chrises hand as he gripped the railings. Looking up, he was in time to see Jill knock out the remnants of glass in the broken window with the butt of her gun and follow the man out. Chris hurried. The S.T.A.R.S may have been well trained but if he could do what he had done, then he didn't want to miss being there for a comrade. Too many of the R.P.D S.T.A.R.S had died – Jill didn't survive the Mansion to die in the hands of some bloodthirsty maniac, and nor had Barry.

Chris had followed Jill out the window and up the fire escape to the roof in time to see Barry firing at the outline of a man with his trusty Magnum .45 – his favourite weapon. Despite being a member of the N.R.A, Barry wasn't the kind of man to fire at a fleeing guy without a damn good reason.

"What's going on?" Chris cried out over the roof-scape, checking his weapon was loaded and rushing to meet Barry and Jill.

"I'll be damned if a man can move that fast!" Barry growled, reloading and giving chase. Chris exchanged startled looks with Jill. The man had dashed straight past Barry and his Magnum, and Barry wasn't a small or clumsy guy either. Whatever he did to evade him had spooked the hell out of this veteran of the R.P.D S.T.A.R.S (he had severed for 16 years).

Giving chase, the man reached the edge of the building and stopped at it, fists balled and teeth gritted, he looked down into the city street below. A busy roar was below, and it was a good distance to the other side of the street. He was cornered. His white hair whipping about his face from the low altitude of Brads helicopter, his golden gaze darted from the chopper, to them, to the other side of the street.

"You've got nowhere to run now _FREEZE_!" Cried out Chris, stopping abruptly at a safe distance and aiming his weapon in both hands, but his demands were made a bit redundant by Barry, stopping dead and firing wildly at the man that stood on the brink of the ledge with his powerful handgun. Jill and Chris were shocked by his reckless action – this simply wasn't the Barry Burton they had come to trust and respect –

- but the pale inhuman man shocked them even further when, with all his might, he jumped into air, flew across the massive gap of the city streets below, and landed on the building on the other side in a roll, jumping to his feet, and running on.

He wasn't human and whatever Barry had seen was a display of this fact. But for some reason, Brad lowered the chopper a distance above their heads and over he wild roaring of the blades that chopped at the air mercilessly, Chris could hear his name.

He looked up to see Brad half leaning out of the chopper, and calling down to him, motioning with his free arm to come with him. This was a rare act of bravery of Brad behalf, and without another thought for the insanity he was about to engage in, Chris jumped out from the very edge of the apartment block and clung hold of the railings on the base of the chopper. Jill cried out his name, but they both ignored it. Brad pulled hard on the controls and they were off in the direction of the white haired creature and the nose of the vehicle tipping down as they picked up speed, flying dangerously low over the city streets and pushing the flying machine hard in order to catch up with the impossibly fast man.

He was sprinting over the rooftops at an impossibly fast speed, the helicopter hard pressed to catch up with him. It was as if he was running a race, jumping over the gaps between rooftops as if they were hurdles close together in interval. Chris concentrated his sight on the man, readying his weapon in one hand as the other dangled him from the racing helicopter. The land seemed a blur beneath them both and Chrises clothes and well-gelled hair billowed from the wind speed. Chrises eyes were narrowed as he tried to think of how he would do this at the intense speed they were going at, but Brad had already concocted an idea before they caught up with the blur of a man. He radioed Chris the idea, and then proceeded with it.

They had caught up with the man and the machine was maintaining his speed but couldn't get in front of him he was travelling so fast; the man wasn't on a roof for more than two seconds before he had crossed it and leapt to the next. On the count of three, Brad pulled back hard on the controls in reverse to make the choppers nose go from a tipped down position from the high speeds, to snap it skywards, and at the exact same time, Chris let go of the railings and was flicked from the perch of the chopper, his momentum generated by the intense speed and slinging motion sending him flying downwards through the air and to the roof it a tremendous thump. Chris rolled into the landing and was up on his feet in less that a heartbeat with weapon aimed and barking out the command-

-"_FREEZE!_"

Kain stopped abruptly, finding the barrel of the gun inches from his face. Chris had barely managed to land a foot in front and had his actions been more than a second too late, Kain would have been long gone past him. Chrises body was battered from landing at the speed he had; blood running from a nasty gash in his right arm and his pants torn in one place, panting from the intense overexertion.

Kain found a smile creeping across his dark lips, and then chuckled softly at the battered, muscular young man inches before him. The boy been thrown from the sky at intense speed in order to scarcely catch up to him. Kain was impressed with Chris. He had been running flat out – few creatures even of Nosgoth could match his unrestrained speed and now he stood before him with a weapon trained to his head. When he had encountered him in J's bar, he really couldn't see the potential he had demonstrated just now.

"I underestimated you, Chris Redfield," Kain smile through bloodstained lips. "and it is quite difficult to find oneself underestimating a mortal when you are of the ones that walk in the shadows."

"Shut up and put your hands on your head." Barked Chris through clenched teeth stained in his gradually seeping blood. True, he had expended much of his strength to get this far, but Kain didn't fancy testing the mortals' limitations once more.

"It would be a shame to lose you to the horrors that brew within the city." Kain said, as the roar of another chopper joined the ST.A.R.S. Apparently, the R.P.D had caught up with what they were doing, and the distant cry of police cars confirmed this theory. They didn't have to wait long before this building was swarming with S.W.A.T. "I witnessed an incident in the bowls of the city, and it has gradually wormed its way onto the surface and into the broken bodies of the sick, the weak and the elderly."

Chris didn't say anything for a number of moments, panting in exhaustion and in the pain he felt all over his beaten body but not breaking his powerful posture, weapon thrust out at arms length at the white haired killer, face creased to an angry frown.

"What are you talking about."

" I speak of the T-virus leak within this city, Redfield." Kain said, his silky dark satin voice feeling no emotion at what he was saying. "Soon, the city will be consumed by the grip of the mindless undead, just as in the Arklay Mansion that you were involved with, and there is nothing you can do to quash its progress. Infection is much slower because of the scale of the city, but I can assure you" Kain lowered his head, but still pierced at the battered young man with the deadly weapon with his threatening golden eyes. "This city has only a few weeks at the most. You cannot save it, but there will be others you can. Go now and take the S.T.A.R.S with you."

The S.W.A.T vans screeched to a halt in the streets outside the building they were on and the searchlights of both the S.T.A.R.S and the R.P.D choppers fell upon them. Kain drew his head to their attention and then back to the man with the gun aimed at his head then grinned a wicked, mischievous grin. He knew a great deal of the soldiers in blackish blue now regarded them, and it would increase the shock impact of what he was about to do.

Kain changed into mist form, and before the young man Kains' formidable body dissipate into a soft white haze and drifted into the cracks and vents of the well lit up concrete roof. Chris didn't lower his weapon right up until Jill and Barry arrived on the scene with the other S.W.A.T.S. He had gotten away but Chris was finding it extremely difficult to swallow how he did it. Back in the S.T.A.R.S office, Jill Chris, Barry and Brad watched the tape recording of the event from the S.W.A.T.S helicopter with a great disbelief about them. He literally disappeared into thin air. No matter how advanced Umbrella's bio weapons were, what he had done seemed more like magic….

For the time being, it didn't matter to Chris what he was or how he got there, only what he had said to him before vanishing. The city was infected and he didn't have long to make an escape before things got too bad.


	2. Part 1: The Researchers in Nosgoth

Part 1:

They say killing never gets any easier…

They say that only monsters in the movies, like vampires and werewolves, are the only ones that can kill without remorse, without being disturbed by the killing of another sentient being for their own ends… but as I thought this over some more, I realised that werewolves and vampires and even zombies don't kill people because they're evil, they kill people because they're hungry and to them, we're just food. When I sit down to a hamburger and fries I'm not overcome with remorse for the poor living thing that had to die so I could get my lunch. Once I tried as I ate some meat sticky and juicy with hot cooked body fat of whatever living thing it had come from and was overcome with disgust and queasiness. It reminded me of how we burn bodies of the dead to stop them from reanimating because of T-virus contamination. If we didn't do them to cinders, then they would look the same kind of dripping-with-fat condition about them as a pork chop, which pretty much puts you off pork chops for a while.

You're probably wondering why I'm on this topic. It is because of something I noticed recently about myself while I cut into the dead body of a woman who used to be a tech who worked at Arklay. Apparently, I was not to ask questions on how she had died and were to just remove a few parts from her body that the company needed, and I complied without question. It wasn't until we were about to start, when I noticed she was still breathing and I realised she wasn't dead but heavily sedated. I was worried about this, but the other scientists just started cutting anyway and if it had not been for the great influence William Birkin had on my mind in my life, I don't think I would have cared about her either.

Not long before that, I had been working late doing paper work. My equation just didn't seem to work, you see, and it was driving me nuts. Rabbitson had told me just before he packed up for home that I should just leave it for now and maybe the answer would come to me while I was at home or something, but I just refused to shift from my workspace, unwilling to be defeated by a mere mathematical problem, though I must admit now that maths really isn't my strong point. I'd been there for hours and hours and it was getting really late when I lost my temper with the stubborn piece of paper, venting my anger by throwing a lampshade across the room, plunging the cold metal room into blackness. It was then that I heard footsteps. The lab was supposed to be empty at this time of night and no one stayed late because of the eerie horror movie-like quality to it the laboratories and mansion had so hearing the steps of a tall man striding down the corridor to meet me in the blackness to which my eyes hadn't adjusted… it sent shivers up my spine and I almost fled the room in a nervous panic.

As the door clanked coldly open, however, I was the face of my superior, William Birkin, watching me through the inky shadows. Birkin was a strange man, to say the least, but I've been though his quirky demeanour so many times in my head that you'll forgive me for not repeating it again. Though he was my superior, he wasn't the head Researcher at the Mansion lab I was in (officially that's me but no one feels like it) yet he spent almost all of his time here at Arklay. It felt like he was the boss around here and often took charge.

He stalked over to the desk and my paper in his giant strides and, to my disgust and horror, picked up my pen and solved the equation right there and then! I had to resist all urges screaming out in my body to cry out as loud as I could in frustration, but resisted it until it was only a clenching of my fist until the knuckles turned white. Though I was making an attempt to hide my discontent, Birkin could see it anyway with his creepy superhuman ability to sniff out what a man was thinking from even a glimmer of emotion on his face. My childish frustration made him smile a bit to himself and then he said something that seemed completely off topic at this present situation.

'Do you want to know a secret?'

Well, even before he hinted at what he wanted to show me, I could feel my gut instincts tell me what it was.

Umbrella is the hugely wealthy pharmaceutical company I work for, you see. It makes anything from sophisticated vaccines for hospitals and medical equipment to those boiled sweets that sooth sore throats, but under the surface, these activities fund the research into the development of biological weapons capable of creating the ultimate soldier. So far, Umbrella's idea of the ultimate soldier sleeps in a tank full of chemicals in the Arklay lab with a huge bone claw on its arm. The official word to the workers is that in researching into the diseases, we're finding cures for them, but everyone knows that though the government is being told we are developing them to find a cure, we all know it's really to research into more destructive bio weapons.

Oswald Spencer is the boss of Umbrella you see and it's no secret that more than a few of the higher-ups in the food chain think he's losing his sense after all these years. Birkin once told me that developing bio weapons is actually causing Spencer to lose money, and his associate Albert Wesker, who is far more in touch with the business side of what we're doing at Arklay, can't work out why he'd want to waste time making these things with no profit to himself. Wesker always was out of touch with the emotional side of life… and me and William both knew without even voicing our opinions to one another that Spencer was interested in the same thing we were; knowledge. He didn't care for money; he cared for the power and enlightenment these bio weapons would bring.

That's where we loop back to what I said a moment ago about what William had to show me. Umbrella, at direct order from Spencer himself, had hired the top specialist on the theory of wormholes and interdimensional travel so that he could be funded to construct 'a machine'. We're not supposed to know anything about it, it being even more top secret than our T-virus experiments and whatnot but there's always going to be one or two people who can't keep their mouths shut working on any big project… Anyway, we'd heard that Spencer had ordered the development for device that could slice through the very fabric of time and space and create a gateway to other worlds. It all sounded very science-fictiony but he was convinced there was no reason why it couldn't work without the right kind of money behind it.

What Birkin took to show me was that very device itself, practically days from completion.

You may have thought it was very unprofessional of him to go around divulging secrets to every other researcher who couldn't figure out his maths homework but the truth is that Birkin is one of the most capable scientists I've ever met. Birkin and I have a very strange relationship going on… Fathoming what must be going through that mind of his constantly fascinates me… I am completely unable to even work out an inch of the human side of him, so much so that I have started to think that Birkin lacks any humanity whatsoever. On his part, he too finds me strange compared with the common man. Birkin isn't the only one who's noticed how I go about deciphering the workings of the minds of everyone who enters my life meticulously, developing a set of rules for handling them so that none of their actions are totally unpredictable. Birkin however, followed rules different to humans. Every human being follows a same basic way of thought, except for Birkin. It's hard to describe off the top of my head like this, but it's sort of like trying to work out long multiplication using simple multiplication rules: no matter how you do it or how many times, your equation just wont work. The best way to handle Birkin is to keep out of his way, then you don't run the risk of being surprised by him, yet no matter how many times I try to expect the unexpected, Birkin always invokes the strongest emotions within me.

As I beheld the giant device in its dormant state, I felt a mixture of emotions explode within my stomach: Joy, fear, admirations and dread… Something about the way its' steel form stood proudly over everything in the wide open but cluttered room told me that it would bring great wonder and great trouble right to our doorstep. It looked pretty similar to our G-virus Vaccine synthesis machine; made up of a giant console and platform on which stood humongous rings of metal rimmed with strange scientific buttons and gages. The V.A.M system had been lying in its side, this device stood up straight almost like a trophy. The multiple rings that made up its frame were all at different positions at the moment, but one could tell that once activated, the rings would align themselves (much like a gyroscope) to make a perfect, giant ring which no doubt served as the portal.

'How long has this been in here?' I dared to ask Williams lightly smiling face.

'Not as long as you might think.' He replied simply, and that was all the words exchanged between us as we beheld the impossible machine. After he closed and locked the door behind us as we left, he told me something that filled me with an instant panic; that when it was operational and the company was sure that travel through the machine was safe, I would be part of the team that would go though its window into the new world. At seeing my alarm, Birkin tried to reassure me that the exploring scientists would not be alone, that we would have more soldiers behind us that we could count on, but now that I think about it, if the company thinks we really need that many, then it must be very dangerous…

So that's the situation, good listeners. Umbrella wants us to go into another world to discover its scientific secrets and I'm on call to be one of the first to go there. For the next week I was terrified that that phone call could come at any moment and I would be told 'Doctor John Howe, you are required as a part of our mission at laboratory insert name of laboratory here. Oh yes and there's a huge chance you might die on alien soil but lets not worry about that now, eh?' Even if I do survive, I'm not partial to having my atoms transported to some far off place but now, I pray for it.

I pray for it because I'm stuck shopping with two young women (friends of my girlfriend) who have gone into stereotype 'buy everything thats cute' mode, bored out of my mind, my feet killing me, my back killing me, and myself being in a generally miserable state. I tried to sneak off without them knowing twice but they found me after two minuets every time.

Now I have nothing against shopping. Going down town without buying anything is like going to an opera while being as deaf as a post; there's no point in it, but theses women have been to six separate shoe shop and bought twice as many pairs of shoes while the ones they're wearing quite clearly are not the ones I saw them wearing less than two days ago. Any they're not cheap, either. And I'm paying. Who the hell needs that many shoes? There are people in this country that cant even afford to wear shoes and they have more now than I'll own in a lifetime! I'm not the sexist type, but a group of supposedly intelligent women clinging to stereotypically idiocy such as this can cause a man like me to wonder if women like those two realise how stupid they look. In this modern age, it seems that to be treated equally, you have to act equally; it's the nature of acceptance, at least amongst the frigid humans of today. I suppose there are always going to be people who hate you for being different, even if it is diversion that causes evolution, and without evolution, we'd all be simple slime in ponds. Maybe that's what they want humans to become once again…

My eyes widened and my heart skipped a beat when I felt my mobile vibrate in my pocket. Even before answering I knew what it would be.

The bulky steel chamber hummed just as much from the whirling and occasional hissing sounds of working machinery as from the chattering of the scientists that occupied the vast chambers itself. It was a strange mixture of sounds that filled one with a kind of anticipation for what we were all gathered here to witness, despite that we all held the knowledge of it already within our racing minds: Umbrella had prepared us as much as it could for the impending events right down to the very noises we would here; they didn't want anything to take their employees by surprise and ultimately leave them vulnerable, even in something as petty as witnessing this.

Though I certainly go through a lot of internal dialogue, I wasn't much of a talker. I watched wordlessly with my arms folded across my chest as the great rings of the dimension device began their unnatural rotations, warming up the machine for its imminent use. Immediately as they all noticed it, group by group, the rate of discussion sped up to a roaring cheer. I shook my head with a heartfelt sigh; why was this such a big deal to them? Why did they have to be so noisy about something they had been briefed about in every possible detail? It just didn't make any sense to me… -

- From the corner of my eye, I caught the gaze of a familiar face and involuntarily winced at the excited recognition in the youthful eyes of my colleague Bill Rabbitson. It knew it was wrong to feel exasperated at the sight of what was possibly my best friend racing to meet up with me, but it happened anyway. At least I'm a lot better at hiding my emotions now than I was when I first came to Arklay.

Rabbitson hadn't changed at all since the very first time we met. He only went through a brief period of shyness before opening the floodgates of emotion. He was bizarrely mentally removed from what was happening in the laboratories of the Arklay Mansion in that he was almost too happy and bouncy about his work than was considered psychologically healthy. However, you can learn a lot from a man when he's drunk… Though I myself remain uncomfortably silent to all my friends while intoxicated, Rabbitson has quite often become manically depressed, bouncing off the walls with happiness before slumping right down into the pit of despair moments later. Such behaviour tells me that maybe all his happiness and light moods are just a shell he encases himself in to stop his work from driving him crazy…

You're probably wondering why some of the messed up stuff I do for a living at Arklay doesn't drive me crazy because I'm pretty much wondering that myself too. Some people have told me that I'm simply just stronger in dealing with it that other people and some have gone so far as to say that I'm already crazy beyond the insanity of my work… What's crazy and what's not start to become very jumbled if you remain too submerged in the odd for as long as I.

My life, believe it or not, wasn't very screwy when I worked at a Chicago branch for Umbrella. The bio weapons experiments Umbrella was conducting were only a little (and when I say little, I really mean BIG but no one was really willing to admit they knew anything) rumour whizzing around the laboratories there. We were told our research was being used to make vaccines and medicines for hospitals and the occasional man-made pathogen for further medical research. It wasn't until I started asking questions about our work that I realised something else was going on here. Every line of enquiry I took on the results of our work, every path I followed to the products of my pathogen research would end in a brick wall and never the answers I craved for. It was then that I met Albert Wesker for the first time. I'll never forget just how much the man scared the hell out of me with his Gestapo act, making out like if I didn't desist, I may not live much longer. He never said it to me directly of course, but the blank, heartless expression stinging my usually unwavering spirit, (at least in those days) those shades covering his eyes giving me a feel as if the man didn't have a soul, like he was a machine… I didn't feel much like arguing with the man then…

Now, I'd speak to Wesker fairly often. He was assistant and colleague to a certain crazy scientist (Birkin, for the less perceptive of you) in my life and interaction with him was inevitable. He still seems as robotic now as he did back then.

"So John"- Rabbitson said quickly, breaking me from my reminiscing with the past. "You getting all excited about visiting another world?" He smiled playfully, rubbing his hands together and cocking his head good-naturedly to the side with a questioning smile. He was always too energetic in most of the things he did.

"…If the machine does work," I replied with my arms folded and a half smile upon my lips, my relaxed manner paralleling Rabbitson exasperating nature. "and somehow we're able to visit another dimension or world or something… There's no guarantee that there will be any form of life on any of them. We could be searching all our lives and come up with nothing."

"Yeah-but on the flip side, what if we DO find another dimension and we're able to communicate? What if the Universe is full of intelligent life? Come-on-Surely the possibility is enough to excite you?"

I shook my head. "Apparently it isn't…" I responded, serving to dampen Bill Rabbitsons' spirits only briefly before he burst back into life again.

"Hey I know! We could ask Birkin!"

I twitched.

"…..Why?" I asked, feeling dread build inside of me. If ever I would have any dealings with Birkin, the man treated me in a way through which I would feel like a small child listening to the words of some great master again. I honestly couldn't tell you if he intended for me to feel that way around him… Maybe he considered his relationship with me some kind of game to amuse himself with…

To help you get more of an insight to the more playful side of the personality of the man, telling you of his behaviour when drunk would tell you his moods when his guard is down. I've only ever seen Birkin get drunk once, but he caused a lot of trouble when he did, like a naughty child upon discovering something of power and importance: Talking them out of it was like trying to negotiate a bus from teetering off an edge of a cliff. This element of him was always there; it had just become greatly amplified by alcohols sedating effects on the brain. What he actually did on that night was climb dangerously to the very rooftop of the mansion building (which involved climbing out of a second floor window, scampering up vines and trellising onto a chimney stack and finally, the rickety old roof itself). When there, he proceeded to fire canisters of teargas from a grenade launcher onto anyone he saw skittering around in the courtyard, of which he had a wide precedence over at his vantage point. I think I was one of them… I was so off-my-head drunk that I had no idea what was happening to me! I really needed to pee and there was only one toilet in the Mansion. I didn't trust myself to hold it in for long enough to search for it so I ran off to the Guardhouse where I knew the toilets were at least one per room. My dorm wasn't in there but one of the guys had to let me use theirs! Suddenly, something heavy thumped against my back followed by huge plumes of white noxious gasses covered all my senses with a vicious veil of malice. All I could remember after that was the horrid stinging of my eyes as I raced to the Guardhouse and maniacal laughter coming from somewhere beyond my field of vision. Birkin took a sadistic kind of pleasure in making things hurt, though he did have some boundaries. Where those boundaries were though, I still haven't really discovered. His morals was just as mysterious to me as his intellect.

"What do you mean 'why ask Birkin?'?" Rabbitson chuckled. "We all know he's been clued in since day one with this!"

I raised my eyebrows. "I didn't!"

"Didn't he tell you?"

"No!" Yelled John angrily. "God – why does he never, EVER tell me these things?"

Rabbitson shook his head. "From what I figure about Birkin, he does it just 'cus he knows it pisses you off."

He was right; everyone knew it. Since day one Birkin had been going out of his way to intimidate me in insignificant instances such as this, but as anyone subjected to emotional torture of any kind will know, little annoyances quickly build up into something quite crushing. He enjoyed toying with my mind because to a man like him, it was just so easy. Judging emotional reactions in other people comes naturally to normal folk, but without giving it serious thought, I can't follow the minds of men instinctually. He often uses that to his advantage…..

When the portal opened, the procedure to be followed somewhat reminded me of space exploration and the examination of other worlds. Now that I say the words out in my mind, what we were planning to do was no different from what NASA would do; send a probe to a planet, in their case, Mars or something, get some dirt samples, test the air quality and head for home and it would only take ten years. Hmph…. Our portal allowed us to examine a world quite possibly outside the known universe in less than a few hours. Problem was for me that if the planet had conditions that could support life, guess who'd be tossed in for further experiments? Us. I think I've told you all that before but I still can't get over how much it sucks.

The gyrating rings of the machine reached their optimum speed and the countdown commenced. At its conclusion, the portal would open and the first probes would be sent through. What struck me as odd was that we hadn't been told how they picked the location to open the portal at. It didn't make any sense; so far the big bosses of Umbrella were trying to convince us they'd picked a location at random but only a child would believe such a shoddy notion. Something was being held back – I had no clue as to what – but for example, maybe they'd found something here on Earth that pointed to this location, or something along those lines….. It was the only explanation I could devise as to why they'd put all their eggs in one basket like this.

The rapidly rotating rings abruptly snapped into place with an angry metal shriek, forming a complete circle and bolts of electricity shot across the inside of the ring in a star shape. Moments later the electricity exploded into a portal, almost liquid like, of a strange and unknown form of energy. Much to my surprise, the cavernous room filled to the brim with scientists and Umbrella soldiers alike was utterly silent, a contrast to the over boisterous mood they all bore literally minuets ago. I can only guess they were stunned by what they were seeing, though it still left me confused. They'd been told so many times what to expect and yet they still found themselves speechless, beholding the rippling glory of the perpendicular pool.

"Send in the probe!" Someone called out, breaking the stunned silence, and two men dressed in lab coats (researchers from another lab) lifted a reasonably hefty machine - that looked to me like one of those newfangled, space-aged vacuum cleaners - up to the pedestal in front of the portal. It pottered along the short ramp clumsily, the mechanical tendril that held its camera shaking around as it ran over every lump and bump on the seemingly smooth slope before disappearing into the strange dimensional fluid. Someone switched on the camera via remote and on the large plasma screen TV high on the wall to the top left of the still open portal. The image flicked up instantaneously. If it weren't for the still open portal, the transmission signals for the TV image being sent by the probe would quite possibly take billions upon billions of years to reach Earth, assuming they were being sent from someplace in this reality at all, but the portal acted as a quick route between the two worlds so the picture appeared as they were being filmed with no time delay. The picture was still bad however. God dammit – did they go so overboard with the budget that they could only afford a cheap web cam for the probe? It was still travelling through the portal, so all that was showing up was static –

-Then a picture slid downwards through the static onto the TV and a poor quality, low definition image appeared. I snorted in dissatisfaction as how poor the picture was but my displeasure died quickly when I noticed something. The image on the large screen was not of a desolate alien landscape but of the interior of a strange room decorated with bizarre runes and clearly intelligently created architecture….. I couldn't really compare it with an architectural design here on Earth, but it all seemed strangely gothic in one way... modern in its preciseness. Maybe it was the runes or the dark and melancholic, shadowy colours, but although it was very dark and depressing, it was hauntingly beautiful.

The probe pottered onwards at a gradual, lumpy pace and each heavy bounce caused the screen to significantly glitch. I had only just noticed there was no sound. It seemed like such a waste of an observational opportunity, to me. –

- The probe had stopped moving for some reason and as the vacuum cleaner-like contraption struggled to move forward on wheels that were treading the same old black marbled floor, a figure came into sight. The breath was caught in the back of the throat in every researcher beholding the fuzzy picture as a shape clothed in armour half appeared on the screen……. But there was something strange with the image……. What we all were viewing wasn't so much of a body clothed in armour….. but just armour, floating unaided where the limbs of a body should have been. I shook my head in disbelieve but full well knowing inside me that what I was seeing was not an error in transmition or just a trick of the light. This man – or whatever it was – had no body.

"How is that possible?" Asked Rabbitson still next to me, the serious tone in his voice sounding almost alien, coming from the usually cheery guy. At least he too was accepting what he was seeing, unlike some of the men around me. The picture even changed colour for a moment as one of the other researchers messed with the controls of the screen, believing there was something wrong with the set rather than the lower half of a man we were seeing.

"It's…..not." I replied bluntly. There was no real scientific explanation for this, not a rational one at least. But I think if I hear another person explain the supernatural away as swamp gas or magnetic force or electrical phenomena, then – I swear – I will cave their head in with a chair. We're scientist for gods sake; our duty is to dispel ignorance, but assuming there's a scientific explanation for everything – even when we're beholding something as extremely odd as floating armour man over there – is ignorance itself.

"What are we going to do?" Said Rabbitson shakily. He was going through that portal along with me and the other teams when the probe was done and enchanted suits of armour didn't have a peace loving track record in fairytale stories. Our first major fear was to die from gravitational force or atmospheric pressure or even poisonous gasses in the air, but not being chopped to ribbons by the medieval periods answer to 'The Terminator'. –

- The walking armours upper torso (which was just beyond camera view) jerked suddenly and the image was lost, replaced with static. My fears had been confirmed; the walking armour destroyed our probe and probably wouldn't like human trespassers on his property and we didn't have a negotiator – didn't think we needed one – so what would happen next?

"Send in 'Team A'." Called out an authoritive voice from the main control desk. A roar of discontent rose from the crowd. Amidst the uproar could be heard random complaints that made every bit of sense to me:

"Is this sick a joke?"

"The first minuet and the probe was completely totalled! You don't need to be psychic to know that's an omen!"

"The probe wasn't there long enough to make any tests! What if the pressure is incredible or the air is toxic?"

"Now, now." Called out one of the men at the control station, indistinguishable from his co-workers because of all their matching black leathers and shades. At his mouth was a headset that amplified his voice to all the men. "If that guy was there then that means there are conditions for supporting life, and if it can support life then it can support us."

"That sounds like a bit of a shoddy plan!" Cried someone from the crowd.

"No it isn't." Replied the speaker, massaging his temples agitatedly. "Look – Absolutely all life requires the same kind of things to function, you know, water, oxygen. Be it in the Sahara Desert or the Antarctic, an ant or a human being, all life need the same basic materials to stay alive, so if life exists on another planet, then it's because they thrive on the same kinds of stuff as us and –why-am-I-explaining-this-to-you-all-anyway? You're the scientists! You should know these things!"

I shook my head. "It still seems like a bit of a risk to me….." I said to myself. –

-"You with the blonde hair and blue eyes; think with your head, not with your mouth." Cried out the speaker, overhearing my comment.

"You could at least call me by name!"

There were two Teams; Team A and Team B. Team A had all the best people in - which is why I was enlisted to it - and was the first wave, as the name would suggest. Team B existed just in-case 'unforeseen events transpired' which meant if we were all wiped out and killed, they took over.

Team A - as I said before – had all the best people in it, meaning Birkin would be there, and so his 'sort of' friend Albert Wesker probably would be too. No one I knew was really one hundred percent sure what Wesker was to Umbrella. At one time, he was a scientist here, but now he dressed and acted as if he was more of a military type than anything else. He was very 'in control' of a situation, no matter how hectic things got so he would have been an obvious choice for the mission; someone to keep it all together when the scientist types couldn't handle it.

Come to think of it, Rabbitson (or Bunny, as I've come to know him as) was coming along with Team A, wasn't he? Huh…. He often comes across as a bit of a ditz but he could be an incredible scientist when he put his mind to it. In a way I suppose it's good to see the guys at the top put him in Team A because it meant they recognise his talent despite his attitude which more often than not leaves a lot of regular people believing him to be an idiot. I suppose it gave him an edge in a situation: Bunny could be very manipulative and devious in a situation without you even becoming aware of it. I can't think of an actual case where he has done this off the top of my head like this, but Bunny….. well….. He'll hold back information using his seemingly clueless persona and use it to bail his ass out of trouble….. No, on second thought, Rabbitson wasn't they type to screw over his friends in a time of need, no matter how anxious and twitchy he appears in a dangerous and demanding situation. I suppose that's why the nickname 'bunny' suits him best; he's like a small, frightened, trapped animal when under pressure. He pretends not to know things, but for positive reasons, maybe because he's afraid of how we'd treat him if we found out what was going on in his head…..

There was an understandable air of discontent in the room as the men uniformed entirely in black at the control desk potentially sealed the fate of the entire 'Team A' which made up about two thirds of the scientists in the chamber and about four teams of Umbrella's finest soldiers, which where men dressed entirely in black body armour and gas masks. Those gas masked even had black filters on the eye sockets so one beholding them couldn't see their faces. What you could see, however, what their eyes, but the coloured plastic tainted their pupils, making them appear blood red. There were some rumours going around the labs that some of those men under the masks weren't entirely men, but modified slightly by some of Umbrellas bio weapon forming drugs. True, I've seen one of those soldiers survive situations that I'd never believed a man could walk away from, but I doubt a bio weapon as sophisticated as a sentient human being exists within Umbrella. That's the problem with out results: Best thing I've seen was the 'Tyrant-002' which was a giant, mindless killing machine twice the size and build of a grown man, and far stronger still. It was also our most intelligent specimen, but it was still little more than an animal. Sometimes it could surprise you with its seemingly intelligent behaviour, like pausing in recognition before running into an obvious trap, then walking around the trap to its prey, but the researchers that worked on it originally were said to be a regimented bunch, and their creation was put together as if it were a well planned and constructed machine and so it rarely fell short of or surpassed expectations.

On that note, what the people at the top were hoping to obtain from this mission – I guess – was some new bio-organic material, like a virus or some bacteria that could never have developed naturally on Earth. From there they hoped to create a new monster-making virus with some new and original parameters, seeing as every virus we had was either descended from or based on Ebola in some way…. They hoped to get hold of something that could never have even graced the minds of men in this world, and from the looks of our floating-armour friend, it seems they won't be too disappointed. To think we could find a way to imitate that; turning an inorganic object such as a suit of armour into something that emulates the processes of life so amazingly….. I felt tingles turn my stomach queasy just thinking about it.

"Well don't just stand their moaning." Called out one of the black clad men at the control desk. "Someone has to be the first to pass through the threshold."

And become the first target for the walking armour? Not likely. I don't think there was a man in this room who'd be dumb enough to-

-"Then I'll go first."

A voice directly behind me that I knew only too well. Rabbitson span around to face the man, shock and surprise fighting with amusement across his jolly features, but I – as I usually did – froze with a feeling of dread filling me, causing me to involuntarily close my eyes in a wince recoiling from an emotional scalding.

It was William Birkin, and somehow - at some point - he had snuck up behind me, watching me and scrutinising my reactions at close proximity, invading my personal space without me even becoming aware of it. William Birkin possessed such an awe inspiring, authoritative prescience in every room he entered, yet seemingly when he wanted to, he could easily suppress that same magnificent aura enabling him to slink about in our midst, undetected by his peers. It was an impressive, albeit irritating power.

"And I'm sure John Howe would follow."

I grew irritated by his possibly unintentionally bullying, presumptuous nature and span around to meet his mildly smiling, ashen mug with deep, cold icy blue eyes.

"I don't think so!" I protested. "I plan on living _past_ today!"

William smirked.

"Don't be such a wimp, Doctor Howe." He pushed gently past me, heading off in the direction of the portal. I stood dumbstruck for a few moments…. I couldn't believe the man had called me a wimp! It was childish of him, so childish that it took me utterly off guard and left me struggling to find the words to express my annoyance. Eventually, I fell upon them.

"Bastard!" And shoving Rabbitson out of the way before he could come up with words of condolence, I followed Birkin off to the portal without even realising what I was getting myself into. At the time, I was filled with irritated anguish that the man could just make a blatant and foolhardy stab at me and then walk off as if the discussion was closed and he had beaten me, when it was quite far from it. I wanted to settle the argument, make him confess that what he had said was immature, but Birkin had very cleverly set off a chain reaction that would finally result in 'Team A' plucking up the courage to step into the unknown. Birkin had pissed me off enough to get me following him in a cross mood, Rabbitson following me in a weak yet friendly attempt to cool me down, and everyone else, seeing three men rushing to face the portal, feeling that perhaps the idea wasn't so suicidal if the three they were following with their eyes across the room, could risk it. I don't think I grasped what I was doing until Birkin disappeared into the erect shimmering pool and all that was left before me was the gateway to the unknown.

"Shit!"

"What's the matter – lost your nerve?" Quipped Rabbitson, who'd been bringing up the rear and peaked over my shoulder at the abrupt transformation in my emotions. "Birkin knows he's like dangling the carrot to you and you just followed the bait right up to the portal. Now all you have to do is take that final step."

"And you'll be there for me I guess?" I sighed sarcastically.

"You know I'll push you if you don't!" He chuckled, slapping his hands down firmly on both of my lab coat clad shoulders. "And besides, are you really willing to just leave Birkin in that world all alone? He trusts in you, John."

"All right, All right, I'll go already. Cut out the emotional blackmail." Surprisingly, I didn't think Birkin would be in much danger over there…. He was even crazier than I am (or should I say eccentric, as the old saying says, only poor men are insane, powerful men are eccentric) and would undoubtedly have planned for a situation like this. He'd be okay. He'd be fine……… right?

Shit. I can't really go back now can I? Not with Rabbitson behind me, pressing his damn body up against me like a small dog trying to hump my leg. Or in this case my entire back. He's too physical, far too physical for my comfort, pressing his hot body against me, warming the cold clammy skin of my face with his hot breath, brushing against my cheek from his position, warm against my back, breathing, his heart beat filling my ears….. or is that my heartbeat drowning out all sounds of importance. And then there's everyone else with their eyes pointing, spearing, digging into the back of my head and making my face turn red hot. Course it could have been Rabbitson with his damn closeness! I swear to god-if he gets a boner, then I'll-

-Rabbitson shoved me. -

If the sensation could be described in mere mortal words – and you know I'll try – for a time, it was as if I really was plunging into a vertical pool of water, my face bombarded with a dense substance filling my nostrils, slick to the touch much like water, yet dry and warm, like one would envision liquid oxygen to be like in consistency. It bubbled over my flesh wildly, and for a time, I dared not to open my eyes until I felt the rush of extreme speed pull back on my body, both inside and out. What I saw when I flicked them open was a tunnel, semi-translucent and hazy, as if made from sparse, sparkling cerulean clouds that allowed for viewing into the galaxies beyond, racing past faster than scientifically possible, without liquidating my body, of course. So many beautiful galaxies flying past me, each every imaginable hue of every colour of the rainbow, glittering magnificently, but their beauty only to be savour for but an instant before they dashed beyond me and out of all possible sensation. But why? Why was I dashing past them in this ethereal tunnel? It made no sense…. Was I rushing past them, because they were all empty and utterly devoid of life? So many billions of beautiful Galaxies of all shapes and sizes…. Was I leaving our Universe altogether? To think that everything for countless billions of light-years was nothing but emptiness, not a single mind chattering to itself in the whole Universe as we know it, but for ourselves….. But at least I could take some comfort in the fact that finally we had found someone out there, even if there were innumerable light-years between us.

And all too soon it was over and I was being thrown from the eerier warmth of the passageway onto the harsh black marble floors of the chamber I'd viewed from the labs. My head clunked against the steely marble as I struck and for the first six seconds of my arrival, the pain was all I could think about and all I could sense.

"And what of this one?" Demanded a rough and rasping voice somewhere a short distance in front of me, his tone that of restless annoyance.

"That's just my associate Doctor John Howe." Said the familiar voice of Birkin in reply to the man. I was still rubbing my head with my fingers brushing roughly through my pure blonde hair. I think I stunned myself somewhat, as it took me a further ten seconds to collect my thoughts before I even considered getting back on my feet.

"And you call yourselves men of science?" Continued the husky and demanding voice of the stranger.

"Don't you have scientists in this world?" Birkin innocently asked.

"We do, but now we have more important things to worry about than books and potions, child." He hissed spitefully, apparently taking offence by what William had said, despite it being perfectly clear in his voice that he had tried his hardest to sound as far from patronising as he could muster, which was an achievement for Birkin.

I became aware that the portal open was still open behind me in a levitating, shimmering ball and just at the moment I became aware of this, Rabbitson join us, landing his slight, yet surprisingly heavy frame right on top of me. The air was forced from my lungs and all I could manage in protest was a painful wheeze. Fortunately for Bunny, I was still pretty dazed from pounding my head down on the marble floor so I was too stunned to scream obscenities at him.

"How many more of you are there?" Barked the rough voiced man.

"I'm sorry but there's a whole team of scientist possibly on their way now…" Birkin replied apologetically. "And that's without the security."

"How dare you drag your putrid people into our world without our permossion!"

"We apologise, but if you consider it in this way: The quicker you help us the sooner we'll be out of your metaphorical hair."

Metaphorical? I looked up and found my eyes almost popping from their sockets. It was the walking armour. Birkin was talking to the walking armour.

"Are you trying to threaten _me_?" He hissed, the pike or Halberd - or whatever the proper name for the spear like weapon he was wielding was – span at the end of its floating arm section like a propeller blade as the floating suit of amour began to lose his patience with Birkin, who was trying his best to cool it off. I frowned in confusion. He didn't seem the least bit intimidated by the drifting armour towering over the scientist, who wasn't a petit man himself.

"Of course I'm not, sir." I think that was the first time I've Birkin address anyone as his superior. "I am but a humble scientist, who"-

-"How dare you patronise me!"

At that point, Rabbitson suddenly became aware of the situation, but not sufficiently to keep his mouth shut.

"Holy shit! That guy's got no body!" Precisely the thing you'd expect a floating armour monster to be sensitive about. I inwardly winced, but I was more concerned that he was sitting on my back still and if the walking armour took to violence, I might get hit in the crossfire.

"You are wrong, little man." He hissed like a snake, his helmet turning to face Rabbitson, who was beginning to embrace his nickname of Bunny, shrinking down under his non-existent stare and making himself seeming even smaller than he was now. "I _have_ a body yet it is not here at present, but festering on a stool back in my bastion." He was being unnecessarily blunt…. "It was a curse bestowed upon me by no fault of my own…"-

-"Come now Malek." The voice of an elderly gentleman rang out from the direction of two large, intricately carven wooden doors and at once the walking armour he had called Malek shrivelled at his words, transforming a proud man with his chest stuck out into a scaled child. "We all know very well that it was entirely your own fault, my boy…" The man was indeed elderly, wearing a strange, greyish green, hooded cloche the hem lined with a fabric golden in colour. The clothing beneath it was purple in shade, and in his left hand was a staff with the wooden effigy of a snake carved around it. At the top of the cane rested a striking pearl-like object – as it was too big, far too big, to be a real pearl – which changed from hues of a light purple to a beautiful navy blue. The old mans eyes were partially cataract, but he seemed to be seeing things perfectly well in spite of this, and upon his forehead was an insignia…. A looping figure of eight. I recognised it as a 'mobius', a loop of infinity with no beginning or end. Now that I thought about it, the snake be bore on his staff held a certain time based significance. The emblem of a snake eating its own tale held the same symbolism as the 'mobius'.

As the old man entered the room, he was accompanied by another man. This bearded man worse seemingly layers of red fabrics and capes, and his pupils were invisible, covered in a pure, snowy-white film. Across his chest, coming out from beneath his spiked shoulder pads, were strange barbs hugging his chest, much resembling rib-like structures… Both men appeared exceptionally prestigious, which is why Birkin completely ignored the floating armour Malek and addressed them instead.

"May I ask who are you?"

"My boy, I believe by all rights, I should be asking you that question."

"My name is Doctor William Birkin. I'm 'Team A' leader and these two clowns are Doctor John Howe and Doctor Bill Rabbitson."

-"Hey- I object to that!" I protested whist throwing Rabbitson from my back and climbing to my feet, dusting the think layer of dust from my genes. The two men and the armour weren't paying much attention to us now that they had been told Birkin was the team leader.

"And what business have you in our fair land, Doctor?" Asked the mobius man in a fairly innocent tone.

"We're looking….." Birkin paused for a moment, thinking twice about telling these strangers their orders, but finally fell on the decision that they needed inside help and these two men – with all their prominent countenance – looked as if they were the best men to befriend. "We're looking for specimens for ….. research."

"And what kind of research?" I felt he knew the answer but wanted to hear Birkin say it. William licked his lips, which was the closest thing he had shown to emotion during the whole discussion.

"Bacteria….. a pathogen we don't have back on Earth….." William inwardly cringed, then decided to go for the kill. "You see we're developing bio weapons, though we're not really allowed to admit it to anyone outside the company… Even inside the company if we're addressing the wrong people." The two men turned to each other, exchanging serious glances with one another.

"Then we might be able to help you, my boy."

Williams eyebrow flicked up.

By this time, Rabbitson and I stood side-by-side watching this all as if we weren't even there in the room with them.

The willowy old man raised his staff up somewhat, and from its prominent pearl crowning the serpentine cane proudly, sparked a beam of wispy white fire, lighting the four candles of a shallow yet prominent basin in the focus of the chamber. We all moved to this basing filled with a shallow shimmering dip of pure and spotless water which formed an image, and image of destruction and of fire, of men slaying innocent screaming civilians with a mere swipe of their clawed five digits.

"These are vampires." The old man explained ever so bluntly. "In an age not so long from now, they will be lead by a tyrant proclaiming himself as the solitary lord of our fair lands of Nosgoth."

"What's this got to do with anything?" Rabbitson whispered in my ear. I nudged him and continued.

"Our roles as pillar guardians ensure that we protect this land from such vermin and yet I fear I might have failed…"

"Wow, wow, wow, rewind." Butt in Rabbitson. "Can't you _please_ explain this from the beginning? We're new here and everything…"

The old man sighed impatiently and started again, the image in the pool transforming from a scene of violence and carnage to a scene of harmony and of peace dominated by what looked like eight or nine white pillars towering into a cloudless the sky.

"These are the Pillars of Nosgoth. Long ago they were born by our ancestors to protect and preserve our land from impurities. The Pillars represent The Mind, Conflict, States, Dimension, Energy, Nature, Death and Time and are presided over by the Pillar of Balance"-

-"How do they do that?" Asked Rabbitson, butting in again unintentionally ignorantly. The old man sighed heavily.

"Their powers are mystical, my child. If we knew how they worked then we would know how to directly control the very powers of God himself."

"Okay then. That clears that up."

"Shut up and listen Rabbitson." I muttered bitterly through my teeth. He was unintentionally rubbishing someone else's beliefs in the least tactless way: without realising it.

The old man continued. "The three you see here are all Pillar guardians. Myself – the guardian of Time: Moebius. The 'floating armour' as you called him: Malek – guardian of Conflict, and my silent associate, Mortanius: guardian of Death."

"That must be a cheerful job."-

-"Shut _up,_ Rabbitson!"

"As I was saying," Moebius continued. "A recent threat has come unto great attention of the circle of nine, the protectors of hope. A great evil has been conceived in our land that threatens to consume us all. The vampire plague smothers our land like a great suffocating cloud of locust, annihilating the fair green land they touch with their poisonous bloodlust." And that's when Moebius made his sales pitch. "It you good men of science can agree to discover a cure for us, then we shall provide you with all the specimens you required." The tone at the end of that sentence was devious and slightly naughty. He wasn't hiding the fact that what he wanted us to do for him in return was wrong, but he considered it the lesser of two evils. Despite the talk about vampire, William somehow maintained a cool, clam look on the situation and considered his answer carefully.

With one hand rubbing at his jaw, William replied. "It might take us some number of years. First what we have to do is discover a way to change humans into vampires and from there work on a way of blocking the process, but if we're successful then we'd both get what we want: You a way of preventing the speared of the vampire plague and us a way of changing a human body into the ultimate bio weapon."

-"You mean you actually buy this 'vampire' crap?"

"Shut the fuck _UP_ Rabbitson!" I was really starting to get sick of him butting in. "If you have an opinion, then express it. Don't trash other people's legitimate negotiations with your remarks."

Rabbitson took a deep (and melodramatic, but that's what I've come to expect from Bunny) sigh, cupping his hands together.

"Just in case you haven't noticed Johnny-boy, vampires don't exist. They were made up by some jerk to send the shits up impressionable idiots, which back in the ye oldie times was absolutely everyone. So what if there have been vampire legends for thousands of years? That doesn't make them real. I mean, thousands of people were killed back on Earth because they were absolutely convinced they were witches but we now know that that was all bullshit. The vamps are probably just people born with a genetic mutation of sharpened canines or something…"

Mortanius and Moebius regarded each other with a tangled mix of frustration, worried anxiety, and a look of what I could only really describe as the visual representation of the words 'what an asshole'. What if they weren't being ignoramuses? What if there really was such a thing as vampires? It would explain a lot, that's for sure.

"What if vampires _are_ real, Rabbitson?" I spoke up, all eyes fixing on me and filling me with an icy dread weighing down in my stomach. "I mean… this world seemingly has humans and a culture much like some of our ancient civilisations…. And we have vampire legends…. Our worlds could have connected before at some point…."

"I imagine it could be possible…" Moebius spoke up. "But if that is so, then which species originates from which world?"

-"Humans defiantly came from our world." William said without any hesitation. "We have evidence of their evolution. Vampires must have originated from this world and humans got in some how."

"Yeah - but humans couldn't possibly have made a portal back in ancient times" I said. "I mean, we've literally only just experience successful portal travel… What if vampires made a portal?"

-"That certainly seems possible." Spoke up Mortanius, saying the first words since he entered the room. "For example, this machine uses vampiric portal technology to sift through the stream of time… It might be possible to modify it to sift through worlds… Perhaps they brought humans to Nosgoth eons ago?"-

-Moebius nudged Mortanius hard. His frown was genuine and harsh. Apparently, Mortanius had said something Moebius didn't agree with.

After hearing Mortanius mention this room was some kind of time machine, the eyes of all three scientists wander around the room. The portal we had travelled from had infact taken up a whole chamber and we had emerged from a doorway leading into it. The chamber the portal was in was clearly the time streaming chamber Mortanius had mentioned. It was very much different in its design to the gothic stone room in which the basin and wooden double doors contained; black marble, beams a dirty golden in colour and all designed to appear like the components in an old clock. Upon the main support beams were the same insignia Moebius bore upon his forehead, the 'mobius'. For a few seconds, my hear skipped a beat when I saw the fantastic globe-like device on the ceiling of the chamber directly above a translucent, pearly in colour glass flooring that revealed the complex instruments inches beneath it and in the centre was another strange pearl-like object, much like the one of Moebiuses staff, on a support famed with two handlebars. It all looked like it should work, but then I remembered that I shouldn't get my hopes up, that these could just be the fantasies of two crazy old men and that everything we had been saying was a load of utter bullshit, but it was then that I turned to the curious floating armour Malek, quietly waiting in the sidelines feeling somewhat inadequate as the men in the room discussed the origins of the human and the vampire races. Apparently, the Conflict Guardian hadn't been blessed with a scientific mind, amongst other things, and shrank down when Mortanius and Moebius took the wheel, but I had noticed that Moebius was the one at the top of the tree in this relationship. Mortanius seemed to shrink down in his prescience in much the same way Malek did, but the comment he made earlier was much more intelligent than anything the Conflict Guardian had come out with…. So why was he acting so downtrodden? I sucked my lips feeling a flutter of suspicious doubt race through me. Moebius seemed pretty cool for someone just having met a race from another world. He hadn't even regarded the broken probe crumpled on the floor and any ambiguity in his expressions, as if he knew what it was and why it was there. He was too professional considering the culture shock such a primitive race should have been experiencing.

"Moebius – I don't understand." I interrupted the heated silence, Moebius glaring scornfully at Mortanius who had remained unwavering, Malek sinking into the background like an unattended shadow melting into the background and Rabbitson and Birkin, two entirely separate entities in both mind and manner, pondering with confused expression of their soft faces. They all turned to me in unison at the odd and out of place remark. Aside from Mortaniuses comment that had clearly disturbed the pace of the discussions, my remark was quite unusual, to them at least.

"What don't you understand, Howe?" He asked patiently, understandingly and at a dawdling pace that threatened to drag down my racy, panicked mood to a slow crawl.

"I don't know… everything I guess…." I struggled to find the words to express my anxieties about the convenience of the situation but something was holding me back. My very breath itself would catch in the back of my throat before I could force it out to say what I felt. To be honest, I wasn't sure what it was I was feeling. It was clearly derived from worry and concern, the stir in the pit of my stomach threatening to build up as a lump in my throat suffocate me was a clear and unmistakable emotion when you deal with some of the thing I have to deal with. But this time, there was something more to it; something purer, something primal, not the outbreak of a million different feelings mixing to one like colours merging in a pallet to form a dark and unsettling colour. This was something strong and unadulterated that simply doesn't occur within me. I'm a complex man who needlessly makes matters more complex for himself; I wasn't used to such pure emotion.

I continued my pitch, expressing my fears.

"Why is everyone so quick to help everyone reach their gaols when we know so little about each other? No one has offered to exchange technology; no one's even asked to look around each other's worlds a bit more before deciding whether they can be trusted. I thought there'd be a lot more talk and discovery when first contact would be achieved with another world."

Mortanius turned angrily to Moebius, the scowl on his mildly wrinkled forehead sending a flicker of hope through me. He defiantly seemed to be agreeing with me strongly, but Moebius barely acknowledged his glances infused with fiery emotion, and calmly and coolly replying;

"We have a terrible plague of vampires upon our land and you and your friends can potentially create a cure. Our two goals, though admittedly different, reap benefits for us all." I didn't like the way Moebius peered at me, overly concerned and understandingly through those milky eyes. There was something ominously artificial about his manner that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I didn't know him nearly well enough to build on a good enough psychological profile on him to guess what was the matter. I guess I'd just have to ride this one out until I knew them all a bit better, as annoying as it was for me to let this drop.

Mortanius spoke up, glaring at Moebius but the hooded old man barely blink at the obvious hostility in his tone;

"There is no cure for vampirism, only death. You yourself taught me that, Moebius, a long time ago."

Moebius smiled warmly as he replied, but the warmth did not touch his pallid eyes. Along with the deliberately slow pace of his reply, it all added to his artificial manner.

"Perhaps, with their science, they can develop a cure."

-"I care not for cures!" Spoke up Malek, finally contributing to the convocation, reacting angrily to Moebius.

"While these men potter away in their laboratories in search of an answer that may never come, the vampires will ravage all of Nosgoth!"

"Silence Malek." Moebius commanded, a brooding tone sneaking into his voice unveiling his increasingly sparse patience. "I will not have you jeopardising this situation with your hot temper."-

-At last the rest of the scientist began to spill into the room, accompanied by armed forces and equipment packs. We all took this as an opportunity to change the subject. We'd all cajoled ourselves into an awkward corner to fight ourselves out of and were more than relieved to deal with the others. Moebius and Mortanius took an active role in helping us out and kindly allowed us to set up equipment in the building in which we had arrived. They called it 'The Sarafan Stronghold' and acted like a military base of operations for the circle and their armour clad holy warriors known as the Sarafan who sought to purge Nosgoth's vampires once and for all. It sounded worryingly too much like ethnic cleansing to me, but I was assured many times that the vampires were a black hearted breed of monsters who brought only pain, despair and death to all that they touched. .….So much so that it was starting to worry mean even more.

Our base was wet up in a courtyard-like arena of finely sculpted stone. It had no roof to it, but a large tent like nylon fabric draped over the top of the stone pillars that lined it soon sorted that out. It seemed a little pointless as we had a second base set up in the chamber just beyond the Chronoplast which contained the dimensional portal, the one that contained the circular basin willed with water that Moebius instructed me was also used as the circles meeting room. That particular base was acting more like a communications base, a computer system installed, along with an intercom transmitter, which enabled people in any location on Nosgoth (with a radio, of course) to communicate with the laboratory back in Raccoon City and with each other. The computer was also fitted with a kind of transmitter that directly linked up with the laboratories computer back in the dimension gate room on Earth. That way, files and information could be uploaded and downloaded between worlds as easily as it could be done back on Earth. We thought the idea of keeping cables trailing through the portals a bit dangerous. If there was an emergency shut down, I wouldn't like to know what would happen. Of course the operation didn't take five minuets, but it didn't take more than a few days.

It was all too swift for my taste. For the most part of the week or so, I spent it pottering around the Sarafan Stronghold. Apparently, the Sarafan that guarded its corridors were under orders not to attack people they see in white coats, besides even if we weren't wearing the coats we'd stick out like sore thumbs.

I wandered the spacious hallways of the Stronghold, at first beholding the marvel that was the architecture. The patterns were defiantly a more traditional form of gothic architecture, and much different from the time streaming chambers gold and black arcane markings. It left me confused. The architecture looked almost identical to stuff found in Earth history - some time during this millennia at the most - which would suggest that humans had come to Nosgoth less than a few hundred years ago, but Moebius and all the other humans in Nosgoth made out as if the human race had been there as long as any human legend could ever remember, thousands and thousands of years…… It didn't make any sense…..

I mused over this along with what Moebius had said involving a cure for the vampire race of Nosgoth. Was he really interested in an actual cure, or a deadly virus that would wipe out all vampires and leave humans untouched? What was the deal with Mortanius? Moebius barely let him get a word in edgeways, but he clearly knew more than he had told us. I recall he said that the time streaming chamber was vampire in origin… . . If vampires were made from humans just like the legends on Earth, and human architecture was so different from vampire architecture, then I made a guess that vampires were native to Nosgoth, and was around long before humans turned up if their culture was once apparently so different from theirs. If that was true than that must have meant at some point vampires were a race that could function completely independently from humans. If that was true, then what changed and why? It seemed too sudden to be evolution. Was that the cure Moebius meant; A way to change the practice of turning humans into vampires and food back to how it was before humans turned up? If I know humans, then changing them into the superior race of vampires would be a great way of corrupting their hearts with power, as was a trait found in all humans. Maybe a cure would be something to deal with their negative aspects like blood lust?

I couldn't be the only man to have come across these thoughts. If these thoughts had crossed the minds of any of the researchers at all, then William Birkin _at least_ would have pondered these thoughts too . . .

'_Maybe he doesn't care.'_ I thought to myself in reply. '_This isn't our world. Sure, there's a lot of opportunity for exportation and discovery, but this world is on a more primitive tech level than ours, meaning there can only be so much we can learn from them. We might not even be here that long once we get hold of a few specimens to experiment on: There's no guarantee William will stick around to hold up his end of the bargain and deal with the Vampires._' Maybe all the other researchers didn't care if there was something strange going on in the subplots of this world; it's not in their job description to unlock the mysteries of Nosgoth. '_And it isn't in yours either. For once in your life John Howe, why not try to do your job and keep your nose out of the affairs of others.'_ My thirst for answers often proved to be insatiable but I tried to force these things from my mind as I headed back to base B (the courtyard base). The strange look I received from the slits on the Sarafans' helmets that held their eyes as I strode past them unnerved me deeply. I despised it when others knew something I didn't, and the icy gazes of the cold steel clad holy warriors spoke their mistrust and knowledge that I didn't yet posses. I figured they didn't like us because of our very nature: We were scientists whose main purpose in life was to know everything we could. They must justifiably believe we were approaching this situation with an ironic ignorance induced by knowledge; the kind of ignorance that was all too common in men of science, like when an educated man regards ones religious beliefs with arrogant dismissal and ridicule, refusing to except the beliefs of others because it doesn't conform to their scientific lore. Situations like that always ended in devastation on the so-called leaned men because of their refusal to recognise the power of faith and belief.

It reminded me of a story I'd heard from . . . somewhere . . . – I don't remember . .. I think it was called 'Dead men's path.' It was about a school in some poor country no doubt, where a new head teacher was selected to run the school. He had a lot of plans for it, for an inspection was due fairly soon, and one of the things he did was to plant lots of pretty flowers and bushes around the perimeter of school. It was a lot of hard work, but I really increased the overall appeal of the school. But one day, the headmaster saw an old, withered woman totter quietly across the very middle of the schoolyard, from one side to the other and out through the bushes again. This left him insanely furious, but on closer inspection of the school yard, he noticed that a worn path had been etched crudely into the dirt exactly where the old woman had trodden. Feeling infuriated, the head teacher asked about the path with one of the older teaching staff and why nothing had been done to stop this, to which he replied that something was done once long ago, but there was unpleasantness and now they just let them be to walk the path as they please; they didn't disrupt anyone or anything. . . The head teacher argued that this was beside the point and that they had no right to trespass upon their property, and ordered that a formidable fence be put up around the perimeter of the school, barring further violation of his schoolyard. A day after the fence was erected, a shaman visited the head teacher and politely explained that the path acted not only as the pathway through which the dead left this world, but more importantly, acted as the path upon which new life entered. The head teacher ridiculed the shaman, saying that dead men do not need paths and that it was his job as a man representing education and enlightenment to teach their children to mock such ridiculous and foolish notions and that his people were trespassing on his land. The shaman replied that though the head teacher may be right, the shaman's people were still entitled to their own views, and that his forefathers had been walking that path long before the school was erected and that by all rights it was the school that was trespassing. The head teacher refused to compromise with his 'insane religious beliefs' and refused to make an opening in the fence to let them pass.

It could have just been unfortunate coincidence, but later on that night, a woman in labour gave birth to a stillborn child and lost her own life in the process, and believing it to be a result of blocking the path that the unborn child would have taken to enter this world, they destroyed the fence, and most of the flower gardens the head teacher had put so much work into constructing. The next day, the inspection commenced and the school received a very poor rating as a result of a tribal feud between the school and the resident villagers.

I thought over this story a lot as I walked the corridors of the Sarafan stronghold back to camp B. I saw the looks some of the other scientists had given Moebius and Mortanius when they clued them in on the situation about the vampires and their nature as pillar guardians. It reminded me of the story. The other scientists could ridicule their beliefs into the ground because of their 'lack of ignorance' on the subject, but the power of belief could destroy everything we work for if we don't respect it. Our work could be destroyed in a heartbeat because we failed to respect the beliefs of others and so I tried to keep very respectful of the things Mortanius and Moebius told me of their roles.

I entered camp B to find a busy scene. Men dressed in back wearing headsets and shades were still setting up severance equipment, rows and rows of monitors situated in a great wall and seemingly needlessly complex control panels poised in front of swivel chairs to control them. What drew my attention was a large desk set up in one corner of the courtyard with a large and rather old looking map drooped across its surface much like a tablecloth. Around it crowded four scientists I recognised from Team B (we had a secure base here, so mission control sent in both teams, each with different objectives), with their forms positioned closely together, draped over the map in inspection. Clearly the reason they were so closely squeezed together was because Mortanius was behind them, trying to tell them something, something important, but they obviously were pretending they hadn't seen him, or were trying to shun him to get him to go away. I approached the scene, swallowing a nervous lump in my throat.

"Mortanius." I said to get his attention and to show him that I at least was interested in what he had to say. Mortanius looked up at me seemingly in bewilderment at my willingness to talk to him, but eventually discarded the other scientists and approached me.

"You are Doctor Howe?" He asked in his rough voice. I smiled in response, attempting to appear placid and friendly, like I'm on his side. Surprisingly he smiled back. It looked odd on him. "You do not appear to take such a hostile view of my beliefs as the others like you."

"I recognise that the power of beliefs can be an influential force, not to be ridiculed but respected." I replied.

"Indeed." Mortanius replied enigmatically. "Many a great and noble race had been destroyed for disrespecting faith, but my role as Necromancer and Guardian of the Pillar of death are far more significant to this world than 'simple pagan belief', as the others call it." I sucked on my lips. I wanted to believe him, but it was hard. . . Apparently, my concern showed on my face, for he responded: " I can understand how you would find it difficult to believe. It would appear that in your land, magic was a force that died long ago, and in its place the laws of science took precedence, making any magic left in your world utterly undetectable to both your senses and your scientific devices. But I am sure a man of science such as yourself is aware that just because you cannot detect something does not mean it does not exist."

He brought up a damn good point, but I felt my heart trapped in my throat, half torn between belief and reason.

I reluctantly shook my head. "Uh. . . I'm sorry but I'm gonna really need some proof. . . ."

Mortanius nodded. "I would expect no less from a learned man of science. Come, follow me." I abided, following his slow pace through the Sarafan stronghold. The Sarafan I passed on my walk only few minuets ago had glared at me in mistrust, now they regarded me with first astonishment, then anger, then curiosity as they internally questioned my reasons for accompanying the necromancer, who was apparently leading me out of the building. One of the warriors even dared to approach.

"Mortanius, sir." He began. "Lord Moebius insists that those researchers do not leave the building without his expressed permission." I gave Mortanius an edgy glance, but he defended his right to show me what he wanted with the reply:

"Moebius and I are both Guardians, men fighting on the same side to rid this world of the vampire plague. Moebius may not be comfortable with letting these scientists roam our land but I am confident that this one at least is enlightened enough to heed our noble cause." I could detect some minute melodrama in his voice. This bewildered me, but I tried not to let it show on my face, though I'd sure as hell ask about it later. "It would aid us greatly in these matters to have at least one with our interests at heart."

Surprisingly, the Sarafan saw reason and let us pass, opening the gateway via a leaver hidden in a niche behind a brick in the wall, but I worried still that he'd be telling Moebius about this and I'd be getting Mortanius into trouble.

"Are you sure about this? I don't want you getting into trouble over me." I murmured, leaning in a little close to him to make sure the Sarafan didn't catch my words as we passed him.

"You already know the reason for my trust in you, Doctor Howe." He whispered in a low voice back to me. "During our first meeting, you expressed you belief that your colleagues were much too hasty to fulfil their work before knowing what they were up against, and I feel as if I am in the same predicament as you are."

As we had long passed the Sarafan, I continued at a more comfortable volume.

I tried to sound apologetic. "I'm not sure I get you."

"I believe we are all hurrying into this state of affairs far too quickly than I find comfortable. The clash between two completely different cultures cannot be ignored until it simply ceases to be, but that is nonetheless what is coming to pass. I feel I need to find someone from your world whom I am confident I can trust and confide in to understand what you and your peers hope to achieve in this world. It seems you are in need of similar services, in that you need to know this world before you can become comfortable in it?"

"You got that right. . ." I replied. " I mean, I saw Rabbitson a few minuets before I went out for a walk and the guy was utterly loving every second of this shit." I scowled angrily at Mortanius, continuing in my rant. "Ya-know it turns out that the second they finish setting up all the gear, they're gonna send us out in on an expedition, camping equipment and all! Rabbitson cant wait, but I fucking can. I hate camping."

"That may not be such a sensible arrangement." Warned Mortanius, his tone laced with uncertainty. "There are things far worse than Vampires stalking the untamed lands of this world."

"Like?"

Mortanius sighed wearily at my seemingly ignorant response, but decided to enlighten me anyway. "Other than the obvious threat of human brigands in the wilderness and to a lesser extent, the aforementioned vampires, the darker places of this world are inhabited by wraiths, shades, unimaginably powerful demons of a wide variety of skills, abilities and sizes and if Moebius has first hand in your affairs, hideous mutants that will be brought about by the diseased binding many years from now."

"Binding? What's that?"

Mortanius nodded. "Surely there is a point in the time stream of your world that acts as a divider between two main points in human history?"

"Sort of I guess." I responded. "The birth of Jesus is sort of accepted as that point. Everything before him counts backwards in years hence BC and the opposite is AD, which I think means something along the lines of 'Ano Domini' or something. . . "

"'In the year of our lord'" Mortanius translated. "The birth of your Messiah is the point from which your history is mapped?"

"He's not everyone's Messiah. That's why now our employers make us call it CE, which means 'common era'. Something to do with PC, which in this context means 'political correctness' but it can also mean 'personal computer'."

"So many abbreviations for such simple phrases would suggest the people of your world is very lazy" Mortanius dryly joked.

"Sometimes I honestly think that laziness is the driving force for us to develop new domestic technology rather than the hunger for progress." I joked back.

"Seriously though, on this world, the inevitable corruption of the Pillars acts as that same key period in history as the birth of the Messiah in your world."

"A possible Messiah." I corrected. "Not everyone believes he's the Son of God."

Mortanius good-naturedly challenged my statement. "Did his lifes teachings monumentally effect and liberate the religion he worshipped?"

"Sort of. He told Jews how to worship their own religion and ended up creating more or less a new one instead."

"'Son of God' or not, he fulfilled the criteria for messiah for those people."

"People who believe in him make out like there's only one position for messiah in all the world, though."

"That is not so on this world." Mortanius replied craftily. "There are two prophesied messiahs of Nosgoth, each for each race."

"What-vampires and humans?"

"No, Vampires and Hylden, Hylden being the adversary race that the Pillars are constructed to keep from this world."

"Oh, so that's what those Pillars are for? And what's this got to do with the binding, I thought you were telling me that?"

Mortanius gave me an odd look for my impatience and continued, faltering in his reply only briefly, then apprehensively continued. "The binding is brought about by the Pillars to keep the Hylden sealed away. It is a closely guarded secret. Of all humans, only myself and Moebius know of this."

"Why's it such a big secret?" I asked, bewildered as we headed into a room, which was dominated by a large balcony.

"We are hunting the vampires to oblivion, do you not remember?" Mortanius said. "And when they are all gone, the very thing that safeguards the Pillars existence will be destroyed."

"So the Pillars will be destroyed and the Hylden will flood into this world?"

Mortanius nodded critically. "They will be full of a most terrible wrath from their imprisonment within a horrid dimension for thousands of years. I do not believe life on this world could survive such endless hell brought about by their wrath, so I hope to prevent this scenario from occurring. The corruption of the Pillars will be a result of my trump card."

"But Moebius is the Time Guardian. Does he know this'll happen?" I asked anxiously, my face creased to a frown.

"If he does, then he must believe he can deal with the Hylden or believes he can use what I plan to do to protect the binding to his own advantage."

"But wiping out the last vampires only to get an even greater plague on Nosgoth . . Why not just let them live and avert an even bigger disaster?"

Mortanius looked down out of emotional distraction. "That is the part I do not understand. I have often wondered if his hatred for the last remaining vampires and his willingness to unleash hell in order to be rid of them is personal but Moebius is a wise and cunning man. He must have realised it would be better to tolerate the few remaining vampires regardless of his emotional standpoint. This conundrum has lead me to believe that there is a darker force at work in all this. . . I have speculated that Moebius is under Hylden influence, yet I have direct contact with them and have not received any indication of any other disciples other than my own. . ."

Any hesitation I felt that Mortanius's views were boring pagan belief had entirely left my system. We'd walked in on a world full of some freaky problems.

Mortanius lead me out onto the balcony. The refreshing, cool breeze sweeping across the balcony was unnervingly clean. . . I've been living in cities all my life. I've never smelt air so fresh and unpolluted in all my life. I was looking out over a beautiful blue shimmering lake, which caught the rays of the gentle alien sun causing it to sparkle and shimmer like a flowing ghostly gown. The lake was bordered by mountains over which peaked tantalising trees of a forest in the skyline just beyond my view but what caught my attention the most was what was in the sky. Nine white pillars, nine white pristine magnificent pillars reaching up into the heavens and beyond all view. My mouth dropped. Something like this is impossible to construct even with our technology. . .

"How do they stay up without falling?"

"We do not ask such questions." Replied Mortanius, regarding the Pillars but with a more calm and docile respect than my amazement. "For all our guardianship, we know not how they function. If we did then we would not work so hard to safeguard them, as we could constantly create more."

A few moments passed as I continued glaring in bewildered admiration, my mind empty of all thought and instead replaced with by a sense of marvel.

"You must be able to see them for miles around.. . ."

Mortanius smiled proudly as he folded his arms, as if he had created them himself and was pleased to see someone else appreciating their magnificence.

"Indeed. From every point in Nosgoth they are visible, their pristine totems reaching far into the limitless heavens. Most common humans have lived with their image for so long that they take their countenance for granted. The fools do not know they will not be as they are forever."

"I don't think I've seen anything quite like it. . . "

Mortanius seemed to be glowing with warm satisfaction. "I did not believe that would be so."


	3. Part 2: Moebius Begins His Plot

William Birkin was draped over the aged map of Nosgoth in an attempt to commit the locations to memory when Moebius approached him. Birkin's ignoring of the Time Streamer was not as intentional as it had been with the Team B scientists and Mortanius. Birkin totally immersed himself in his work to the point he would often cut off from reality, which was often what made his such a great scientist, but such a poor human being social-wise: People thought h was just ignorant and uncaring. It was ironic, because possibly the reason why Birkin could be so bitter to other people was because of the indifferent way they often treated him, which was because of something they believed was true about Birkin but really wasn't. I could see through all this, naturally but most couldn't.

"Doctor Birkin." Moebius addressed him, and he span around, unsure what to expect. "I can only assume your men are ready for their first mission?"

"At what point did we agree you were giving the orders?" Birkin replied coldly, folding his arms defensively across his chest. Moebius chuckled warmly in this throat, his posture far less intimidating. A willowy old man holding a staff with his free arm by his side, chest held out with a grin upon his dry lips. . . it wasn't a threatening style of body language, infact it was quite the opposite.

"My boy, if we are to get anywhere in these matters, then you need someone to tell you where to look; the vampires are a wiely race and even now they often elude us."

William turned back to the map. "That's why I'm studying this effigy of Nosgoth."

Moebius again chuckled, and William was beginning to grasp that he was really hated that sound. "That map is nearly as old as I am. How much of the real Nosgoth do you believe is on there? Every century, something happens that greatly changes the face of the land in some areas, and if you truly are in search of scientific wonders, then travelling through the ages is something that you would need to consider."

"You can provide us with time travel then?" Birkin asked, looking over his shoulder at the Time Streamer.

Moebius approached Birkin closer until he was almost breathing down his neck, staff clacking on the stone flooring with each lengthy step he took. "I wouldn't be much of a Time Guardian if I couldn't."

Birkin swallowed a sickening lump in his throat. He didn't trust Moebius, Mortanius, Malek - heck – anyone from this world. They all seemed to want to help them steal vampires too much. Not so long ago in the day, he would probably have taken the help without question but something had happened in the day that made him change his mind about Nosgoth.

Shortly after I disappeared on my walk while waiting for the set-up of the camps to finished, Birkin had wandered the stronghold himself and had accidentally found a window that was not being guarded by a Sarafan patrol which looked out over a secret, mountainous path heading to the Pillars of Nosgoth. He would never forget how he felt as he regarded the land. There was something about this world that ached his soul, like a melancholic, ethereal music he couldn't hear in the human sense, but felt in his heart instead. He fell quiet as he listened to the non-existent music, permeated with a sense of ancient history all over the green land moving gently in the subtle breeze, spots of pollen lifting into the air like tiny dancing souls of the ancient inhabitants of this world. At that moment Birkin was certain that life had existed on Nosgoth for aeons longer than it had on Earth and it still existed, not in substantial form but as something else that infused everything about Nosgoth. Birkin inhaled the air and was certain he could smell its tint in the air, like a subtle odour one couldn't put their finger on. It was all very eerie, stirring Birkin's soul for the first time; at least it was the first time he was stirred by nature when it wasn't killing people. –

- But just as his heart was at its most vulnerable, a terrible streaking noise cut through the mystic aura like a knife sliding through hot butter. It shook Birkin up, but looking to the source of the noise, an unusually sense of dread befell him. The shriek had come from a single crow perched in a tree several meters off to his front-left. It scraped its beak on the tree and continued regarding him with a lazy yet spiteful look in its yellow eyes. It was hunched over like an old man, its feathers grey with a mouldy greenish hint to them that was an unusual colour for a crow or a raven or whatever it was. It was a large bird, somewhat bigger than the crows back on the Spencer Estate. The crows inside the art gallery in the Spencer Estate were an experiment. They had been enhanced with T-virus both physically and mentally, and were attack trained to kill when the metal bar they perched on had an electric charge go through it activated by a wrong choice on the art gallery puzzle. They went for the face, scratching and clawing at the eyes until the victim fell and proceeded to mercilessly claw at every point of skin and cloth the came across like a thousand cutting knives. This crow was bigger that even their bioweapon crows and regarded him with a more intelligent malice in its eyes rather than the mindless waiting of the Spencer Estate crows. It was only then that he noticed that this crow had company. His blood turned to ice as he slowly realised that every tree he could see was filled with there grey grows all watching and stronghold patiently with a kind of brooding anger deep inside them. Gradually and without making any sudden movements, he very slowly stood up from his slouched leaning on the windowsill and pulled the shutters to close. Once they were locked tight, he let out a puff of relief from his damp lips. He hadn't felt quite that alarmed in a great while.

"I'd rather not go outside just yet." Commented Birkin, still learning over the old map with his shoulders hunched.

"If it unnerves you to take a selection of your men into Nosgoth alone then I will be happy to loan you a few of my finest soldiers."

Birkin arrogantly snorted. "I doubt that would be of much comfort to them." Moebius swallowed back his anger at Doctor Birkin's impudence and didn't allow it to show upon his wrinkled features.

"The vampires of this age most commonly reside within a mansion deep inside the Black Forest of Termagent."-

-"A Mansion in the middle of a forest. . ..Suddenly I'm getting a sense of deja vu." Of course Birkin was referring to the Spencer Estate, at which he had worked in for a while, yet Moebius gave him an irritated look, but because Birkin's back was facing him, he didn't see it.

Moebius continued. "As I was saying, the Black Forest is residence to currently the most powerful vampire in all of Nosgoth. Of course I require you to return him once you're done. . ."

"Are that any vampires we could take that you don't care if we keep or not?" Birkin asked sarcastically but though he believed he was being shrewd and was asking Moebius an irritating question, this was precisely the opportunity the Time Guardian was waiting for.

"There is one. . . Quite possibly the most powerful animal you could ever come to possess is the vampire Kain."

"Somehow I doubt it."

Moebius gritted his teeth, but then persisted. "No matter what your company has developed it cannot come close to the incredible power of this creature. I want to get rid of him, you want the best specimen you can get your hands on. You cannot obtain a better creature for your research."

Birkin turned around, his icy blue eyes meeting the Time Streamers'. "Though at first I didn't share Doctor Howe's suspicions against you and your over-zealous operation, Moebius, your sudden enthusiasm to palm off some vampire off on me is sending alarm bells ringing. Before I just simply believed you were keen, but now I'm becoming doubtful."

"Come now William." Moebius said, his voice oozing with a fragile defencelessness that went astoundingly well with his elderly form as he seemingly tenderly approached the scientist. "It should be clear to a learned man like you that I want to get rid of Kain and I don't care how it is done, so long as he won't come back."

William nodded to himself. "Your right to guess that would happen. Some of the things we want to do to the samples. . . We plan that from Raccoon to Nosgoth, it's only a one way journey."

"Consider my offer of a voyage to The Black Forest as a trial then, and that if you can bring back the Vampire Vorador, then I'll give you a means to abduct Kain when he is at his most vulnerable."

"If he's at his most vulnerable, then why don't you just kill him?"

"The passage of time has impeded me from doing so. I cannot directly kill Kain myself, only hope to manipulate the Hylden Messiah, Raziel into eliminating Kain further down the Time Stream."

"Why him?"

"Because he has Freewill, something which no other creature on this world has." Right up until that point Moebius had William's honest attention and went back to examining his map. "Do not make the mistake of ignoring me, Birkin." Moebius warned, his 'wise, helpful old man' impersonation melting into menacing growl. "Your has a Time Stream that may operate differently from ours, but in this world, Freewill is an illusion and you could not possibly be talking to a greater expert on the matter: I know what I'm talking about. You and your men are foreign elements in the Time Stream meaning you can do things that no other creature can. Eliminating Kain for me is one of them."

"'For you'?" Repeating William sarcastically. "And I thought you had all of Nosgoth's interests at heart."

"I do." Moebius half barked. He squeezed shut his eyes in a cringe; such an outburst of untamed emotion wasn't like him. As he dealt with the flood of researchers and maintenance men, Moebius often felt as if he was acting without a script. He was very used to using his omniscience and now that he had to work without it, he began to comprehend that his manipulations were very dependant on it. He decided to see this as a learning experience, and if he got it right, then he wouldn't even have to bother with Raziel and his potential elimination of Kain. It would save him a great deal of hassle and he could deal with whatever negative outcomes came of removing Kain. Those men didn't have a clue about this world, no matter how much they were regarded as geniuses back on their world. They were utter beginners concerning forces of Nosgoth, and because of a lack of magical capacity in their world, they arrogantly assumed it didn't exist. Moebius could be certain that before their operation ended, their minds would have changed.

But though the researchers provided Moebius with a gigantic shortcut in his plans, he first decided he must be absolutely sure they were as capable as they liked to make out and chose to analyse their abilities by getting them to retrieve Vorador from Termagent Forest. He would be enough keep those scientists happy for a time until Moebius was confident as to how he would proceed with his strategy.

It had crossed his mind that Mortanius would try to stop him, but the Necromancer was not nearly as cunning as the thought he was. On the surface those scientists must have believed them to be allies, but that wasn't always the case. They both played out necessary roles in the early stages of each-others' plans, it was just in the later stages of the game that they would begin to really impede each other. Because of their apparent alliance, the men would doubt that anything Mortanius said was any different from what he said, and thus most likely ignore him. Moebius was pleased to see this was the case when he had caught sight of Mortanius trying to talk to a number of men white coats draped across the map earlier and wound up being totally shunned by them.

Moebius continued with Birkin, realising him to be the clear leader of the scientists and his main playing piece in this stage of the game. He couldn't afford to mess this up: The opportunity was too tempting.

"Vorador is currently the human born vampire that has existed for the longest duration of time that is within your grasp. He is nothing compared to Kain at his stage of vampiric development, yet he is more powerful than any other vampire that has come to exist other than Kain."

"You couldn't get hold of a vampire who was born vampire could you?"

"That is not a possibility." Moebius lied. They could take Janos Audron, who was the last remaining ancient vampire and alive in this time period, but that wouldn't do to serve Moebiuses plot. "The Black Forest is home to all manner of savage monsters other than vampires. I would recommend it as the starting point in your"-

-Someone's abruptly shriek of a laugh knifed through the tense atmosphere and into the hearts of both the scientist and the Time Streamer. They both span around in furious anger to the one behind them who had so annoyingly burst out laughing to see that it was Bill Rabbitson.

"Black Forest!" He cried out through his manic laughter. "That just sounds so wrong!"

Birkin placed his cupped hands slowly and deliberately onto his face in sheer frustrated embarrassment and moaned into them. Moebius scowled and shook his head, finding it difficult to believe just such a man could be on the same level as the other scientists.

"Do you find something about that amusing?" Snapped Moebius. After a number of moments, Rabbitson laughter spluttered down into a cheeky smirk.

"I didn't think a guy as old as you would get what I'm talking about! It's probably been centuries since you saw a black forest!"

Birkin rushed past Moebius and snagged Rabbitson violently by the arm with an air of suppressed rage about him. "You utter bastard!" He kept his voice low so Moebius couldn't hear what he was exactly saying. "I was just about to get somewhere with him and then you come along with you big mouth and your immature sense of humour and sour the deal!"

"Shit- I'm sorry, I didn't realise you were talking about collecting specimens."

"There're a lot of things you don't seem to realise!" Hissed Birkin. "Like how close you are to getting kicked off this project!"

-"That wont be necessary." Interrupted Moebius. "The expedition would be quite perilous." Moebius explained. "I understand if you wanted to send researchers of a lower level of skill to do the job, but they still need a high skilled researcher to lead the expedition. . ."

Birkin understood that he was talking about Rabbitson.

"I doubt this moron could find his ass with a map." Commented William, glaring down at Rabbitson who was peering pitifully up at Birkin like a scared, trapped rabbit.

"He would not have been chosen to come here in the first place if he wasn't sufficiently skilled."

William nodded and beamed down at Rabbitson, cheerfully. That smile would have seemed warm and friendly if it weren't for what had just been said. Birkin now appreciated what I had to put up with by hanging out with Rabbitson and my other two friends from the Arklay Labs, Steve Keller and Henry Sarton. A cunning plan was forming in Birkin's mind. He'd shake up those three idiots - who though they may be gifted scientists, totally lacked a sensible attitude – by sending them off to Termagent with the backup of equipment and an Umbrella S.W.A.T unit or two and see what turned up.


	4. Part 3: Science and Magic

Steve Keller and Henry Sarton were two best friends I knew from the Arklay Mansion, a secret Umbrella laboratory know to the public as the Spencer Estate, a Mansion that was originally designed for Umbrella executives visiting Raccoon City, but they ditched the Mansion soon after it's construction, and in the public eye they wasted the several million they spent on its extravagant décor to use it as a chemical storage dump. No one really saw it as suspicious because the loss of a few million dollars wouldn't have hurt Umbrella if they wasted the Mansion. Besides, they provided a ton of jobs in Raccoon City, so it was unlikely the people would bite the hand the fed them and investigated into these strange occurrences. Currently, I was supposed to lead the Mansion facility, though it rarely felt like it. Things had been busy there recently, what with the development of the Tyrant - currently our most powerful bioweapon – and the partially secret development of the dimension gate that had got us to Nosgoth.

As I was saying before I deviated a little there, Steve Keller and Henry Sarton hung out a lot with Rabbitson and me on our breaks in the Arklay Mansion lab. The two were aggravating, narrow-minded, piggish men who rarely cared about anyone else other than themselves but much like most of the mentally irregular men of Arklay labs, they were good researchers to the point that it redeemed them. . . .Sort of. However their behaviour was disruptive from time to time which was why they originally weren't on either Team A or Team B, but this time, Birkin had made an exception.

"I don't know why you're all so –like – happy to be doing this." Said Rabbitson, sobering down from his usually elated mood, like he'd taken a cold shower or something. . . "The only reason Birkin gave us this job was because it's the shitest one."

"Bunny," Steve addressed Bill Rabbitson as he tried out an N.V.G (night vision goggles) headset despite it was about two in the afternoon. "The most exciting thing I've seen in the line of my research was the time a few month back when you got three human donor hearts out of the cold room and juggled them."

Henry, sitting on the floor net to a large, black plastic box of hi-tech equipment, chuckled like a naughty, giddy schoolboy. "I remember that! That was great!" Henry acted surprisingly immature when he wanted to, despite being mostly bald except for a strange halo-like formation of hair around the top of his bald dome, and clearly being in his early fifties or something. Steve was more mid thirties, but from the way he behaved and spoke, he came across as more of a well developed twenty-year old.

After testing out the N.V.G a little more and finding it to be crap in the light of the middle of the day, he replaced it with Thermal Goggles, took one look at Henry, and shrieked in laughter;

"_OH MY GOD I CAN SEE YOUR THING_!"

"This was what I'm afraid of!" Yelled out Rabbitson over the din, taking control of the gang of idiots in what I personally saw as a heart-warming, maternal way. "He didn't set us on this mission because he thought it was easy to handle. I'm afraid to think of whether he wanted us to survive unscathed or not. . .and you all act like a bunch of morons! I don't know where the hell John's disappeared to, and Birkin freaked out not so long ago but I don't think he thinks I noticed so I don't think some of the stuff the Sarafan tells us is all bull like we all think."

Steve took off the Thermal Goggles and quickly inserted a cigarette into his lips, lighting up before he expressed his views. "C'mon, you don't honestly think vampires are real?"

Henry looked up to Steve from his sitting position. "They guys a hippy: what do you expect?"

"I'm not a hippy!" Rabbitson argued. It was always a sensitive issue for him, what with his appearance; he wore a red bandanna with white polka dots around the top of his forehead to keep his large and fluffy brown hair from falling into his eyes. "Looks – Seriously for a moment: What if they're right? What if vampires are real?"

"As if something with such light sensitivity is going to evolve naturally." Commented Steve. "All life needs light to survive at some point in their evolutionary chain: The most basic life forms animals eventually evolved from were plants, which have chloroplasts, which _need_ light, so it's unlikely such a large animal can evolve such a lethal weakness towards light. Single celled organisms, viruses, yeah; it can happen. Just take a look at the Ebola virus we researched back in the old days of Umbrella, but how the hell can a whole intelligent life form develop a lethal weakness to light? You can't tell me that such a life form can go that long without needing to expose themselves to light, I mean; they feed on humans for gods sake! Humans are light loving animals, they get some of their vitamins from the light, so it's likely they're gonna at least withstand natural light if their prey live in it."

"But you're looking at this from a scientific standpoint!" Warned Rabbitson. "What if there's more going on than the forces of science in Nosgoth?"

"You mean magic, don't you?" Chuckled Henry. "Magic's not real. It's a label given to anything primitive cultures can't explain. 'The sun shines – it's magic - the wind blows – it's magic – a meteor is hurtling towards Earth at an incredible rate and threatens to destroy all mankind as we know it – it's magic'"

Rabbitson couldn't think of something to say back to that. Back on Earth that was the case, but here in Nosgoth. . . was that really the case? Was it really as simple as the humans of Nosgoth trying to explain something they couldn't?

"Do you guys really think we should be doing this alone? Don't you think we need a guide or something?"

"Moebius won't do it." Said Henry. For a moment Rabbitson though he might be talking seriously, until he added; "He had a hip replacement operation recently and he has to go easy on it. Doctors orders."

-"And he told us that won't let Malek go." Added Steve. "Apparently he has a beef with the vampire we're supposed to be getting at some point 'in the future' and he doesn't want to endanger the Time Stream. Whatever. He naturally hates vampires even before then so I guess there'd be a risk of Malek killing him if he let him go with us." As he spoke, Henry pulled out a cattle prod from the box of equipment.

"We can easily knock him out without killing him with the shit we got here." He then proceeded to use the cattle prod on his own hand and cursed out loud in pain and shock.

"We are so gonna die." Commented Rabbitson.

By the time Mortanius and I arrived back at Camp B, the whole place - aside from the now manned and fully constructed surveillance consoles taking up the bulk of the area - seemed relatively empty. No guards, no gas mask-clad soldiers. . .

"What's going on?" I said aside to Mortanius, as if I was expecting a reply. He simply shook his head. I approached one of the men at the consoles, his black outfit complete with dark shade rendering his physical appearance utterly indistinguishable from all the others. "Where's Rabbitson?"

""We're monitoring his teams progress right now." He responded, spinning around in this swivel chair to face me.

"What progress?" I asked in distress, shoving past him to view the small TV screen displaying a shaky camera viewpoint, and sure enough, I saw Rabbitson in it, apparently talking to the camera holder as they organised equipment in a vehicle that seemed to be a bus or something, but instead of being lined with seats, it was a mobile laboratory, like the ones we used when doing field work. "How did they manage to get a mobile lab into Nosgoth through that portal?" I asked. The Dimension Gate that held the portal may have been big, but it didn't look like you could get a vehicle shaped like a bus through it, especially when it ended up in the Sarafan Stronghold.

"Moebius and one of our Gate engineers found a way to hack into the interdimensional pathway using Moebiuses Time Streaming abilities. Time and space aren't very different from each other, and through the marriage of their techniques, they devised a way to open portals into the interdimensional tunnel from multiple points. Part of Rabbitson and the others mission directives is to set up mini-gates in the shape of doors at checkpoints to allow instant teleportation between both the Sarafan Stronghold and the main gate back in Raccoon City, the location the gate sends you to being a selectable option. The technology was being using in Nosgoth in the first place but the gates weren't crafted by human hands so our scientists found it difficult to imitate the technology." The man smiled at me slightly. "Moebius says our gates provide speedier travel, too. A real improvement on the technology."

Mortanius seemed to be taking an interest, and suggested the question: "This 'interdimensional pathway' you continue to mention. . ."

They guy nodded. "Seems that there's a pathway that's billions of years old between our two worlds. It's always been there, but it seems that a long time ago, there was some kind of successful connection, an ancient point at which this pathway was physically joined onto Earth to allow free passageway between worlds, but was destroyed. The Earth end of the tunnel was open in a sense but not possible to access from any point on Earth so the only thing our Dimension Gate back on Earth had to do was connect back onto it and we could send anything we wanted to Nosgoth."

"Then that must imply that the union to this 'tunnel' you speak of was still active on Nosgoth." Stated Mortanius, questioningly.

"There is some evidence of breakage at some point on the Nosgothic end, too." Told the man. "But shortly after that, it fused onto the Time Streaming Device. All this time, it had a secret second function and you've not been aware of it because the Earth connection hadn't been made. If it's not connected at both ends, then the tunnel is utterly useless and doesn't seem to be at full power, which could be why you Pillar Guardians never detected it with your magic."-

- "And why people from our world could, through the use of science." I added. "Because if something doesn't emanate magical power, it becomes something closer to the laws of science and so it becomes detectable via science."

"That's right." He said. "When Umbrella discovered it, the tunnels magical power was at an all-time low. It was the most scientifically based, and drained of magic, it could become without collapsing. Now that we've re-established the connection, the tunnel is powering back up and in a matter of years, it'll be at full power again."

"Tell me more of the broken connections." Asked Mortanius. I guess I really couldn't be surprised that he cared so much about it; it had been under his nose the whole time and he knew nothing about it.

"Well we figured the original Nosgothic end of the connection was to a Dimension Device here, possibly close to the Time Streaming Device, but was destroyed, intentionally or accidentally. Because Time Streaming is so similar in its basic principals to Dimension Streaming, the tunnel automatically fused to its functions, like a broken bone fusing to similar bone tissue; it's a natural progression. However the problem for the tunnel was that the connection on Earth had been destroyed too, and there was nothing for the Earth end of the tunnel to fuse to. As a result, the power contained inside it leaked out of this massive gaping wound and threatened to destroy it. We re-built the connection before that could happen, giving it a chance to heal."

"How is this tunnel possible?" I asked in amazement.

"We don't know whether it's natural or man made." He confessed. "One idea is that all worlds are connected to a sister world to provide a balance and when that connection is broken, both worlds descends into madness. Another working theory is that the non-human life on Nosgoth built the gateway to Earth because it was the closest planet in the Universe that had life on it. It would also explain why Earth has vampire legends and Nosgoth has humans. I mean, in England, Earth, the grey squirrel was an animal introduced from a foreign land and now it thrives as if it was there all along. The same could have happened to Nosgoth. Humans are a little different, though. A sufficient evolutionary gene pool can't consist of something like a mere two hundred humans. It has to be a few thousand at the very least. Whoever brought humans to this world meant for them to live here; we're not talking an escaped science project or something."

I felt uncomfortable with his analogy, but for different reason that you might think. "When grey squirrels were introduced, they wiped out the native red squirrel population. Now they exist in very few places. . ." From the solemn look in his milky, pupil-less eyes, Mortanius knew what I was comparing this to even before I said it. "It sounds a lot like how humans, an introduced species, have got the vampires on the run."

The guy at the monitors snorted arrogantly. "Red squirrels don't have pointy teeth and eat grey squirrels."

"My point exactly." I said gravely. "Humans are the violent ones, pretending vampires are the real monsters and savagely wipe out the vampires despite the fact that we have the main foothold on this world, yet we justify it by pretending they're the hideous, ungodly ones trying to dominate Nosgoth. And we call them bloodthirsty . . ."

"You should be mindful of what you say on the matter, Doctor Howe." Warned Mortanius. "There are those who would kill you for what you have just said."

"I proved to the Arklay Researchers a long time ago that I wasn't afraid to ask questions about my work." I said defiantly. "So long as there is breath in my body, I'll want to know the truth above all else."

"Though foolish," Commented Mortanius. "It is noble of you to whish as such."

"I'm a scientist. Truth . . . is really something we all should aspire towards." The words felt uncomfortable in my throat, considering Umbrella was developing bioweapons behind the backs of almost everyone on the planet but it was something I felt had to be said. In history, so-called scientists had disregarded some of the greatest theories known to man - such as that of light, gravity and evolution - because of simple personal belief.

There was that world again; 'belief'. Guess I wasn't wrong in thinking belief was a powerful force. It caused self-confessed men of science to block out mentally scientific fact not because it wasn't true, but because it interfered with their belief. If 'mere' belief could stop scientists, the very gatekeepers of enlightenment, from realising inescapable scientific fact, then the power of belief had such a tangible effect on society and way of life as propaganda or even the very laws of nature themselves. I shuddered momentarily. Belief . . . It had a far more substantial effect on the quality of life and the nature of death than I had let myself understand.

I got a grip on myself and asked the man at the monitors: "What else are Rabbitson and the others up to?"

"They're trying to secure a live vampire specimen in the heart of Termagent Forest, roughly off to the North East."

"They what?" Growled Mortanius.

"Apparently Moebius set it as a test to secure a specimen called Vorador before he let them take the real prize."

Mortanius shook his head in disgust. "If such a powerful creature asVorador's role is but there mere test, then that can only mean the Time Streamer plans on giving them Kain!"

"What's going on?" I demanded, trying to grasp Mortaniuses attention.

"Moebius desires nothing more than to be rid of the vampire Kain. With your fellow scientists current arrival, Moebius has potentially received massive shortcut in his plans. Your men are the only creatures currently active in Nosgoth that are free from this worlds Time Streamer and its Wheel of Fate meaning the researchers, with all your technology and man power, are capable of taking Kain from this world regardless of his destiny!"

"And removing him from this worlds Time Stream is as good as killing him . . ." I felt a lump in form in my throat. If Kain was nearly as important to this world as Mortanius was making out, then we all could be in serious trouble if I didn't get this information recognised before it was too late. "Where's Birkin?" I demanded to the man at the control desk who had been politely listening to the whole thing without a sound after his length explanation.

"He was here a little while ago, talking to some of the Pillar Guardians but he just disappeared . . . I'm sorry but I really didn't notice anything strange going on. To be honest, I was too busy watching these screens to notice where he went and when you guys came in, I though he was still in here."

Mortanius took control of the situation. "John, you have to find a way of contacting your friends heading for Termagent. I'll find Birkin."

"Why can't we do it the other way 'round? You know Nosgoth better than I do and it would be easier for you to track them."

"Their mission as well as to capture the vampire Vorador is to set up checkpoints for future use. There is a chance those checkpoints could be manned with armed guards and if I follow, then they may take me into their custody. You, they would recognise and allow to pass."

-"If this really is important"- piped up the guy at the control desk. "you could take the all terrain vehicle we imported from Earth. It might come in handy, especially if they've already gotten to the swamp by now." I nodded to him and he took a set of about six keys from an arrangement of hooks on which was mounted labelled keys on the side of the system of monitors. He also took another key from there and added it to the ring. I guessed this must be the key for the car. "This is the spear key set for the ones they took with them on their mission." He instructed me. "They're all labelled; a key to the alarm system, a key to the electrified cage, a key to the weapons locker on the jeep belonging to the Umbrella soldiers accompanying them, a key to the door of the mobile lab, a key to the draws and cupboards on the mobile lab and finally two keys, one for the ignition on the soldiers jeep and one for the busses ignition."

"Got it." I turned to Mortanius. "You know what you're doing, right?" Mortanius nodded. "Then I'll see you when we're done. Remember to tell William I'm going for the others and get them to bring backup at least."

"Where are all the other researchers?" Mortanius enquired.

"They might have gone back for a bit to Earth to bring more supplies and the soldiers may all be with Rabbitson and the others. This place is manned by Sarafan so they wouldn't worry about leaving this stuff without Umbrella guard."

"Very well. If necessary I shall travel back to Earth to find him."

"That might be a possibility." I replied. "He could have gone back to prepare for Vorador."

We parted ways and I headed down through the Stronghold searching for one of many secret passageways towards the back of the complex that lead out onto an empty plot of land being used as a vehicle depot. Apparently some idiot had an idea to get a Harrier in. Like that was going to happen. If we brought in a Harrier (as if we need that kind of airspeed) we'd probably waste a ton of budget. That's why those working on the project were bringing everything in by hand. If we got someone in from another area of Umbrella to do all the heavy work, then we would have to pay for it and more people would know about our work than necessary.

At the time I didn't think twice about telling Mortanius to go and find William. I'd even given him spoken clearance to travel to Earth regardless of any quarantine directives put in place. Looking back I can't believe I was so trusting but it's not like it didn't bother him. We didn't give him much of a choice when we barged into his world and threatened to destroy everything everyone on Nosgoth had ever worked towards because of some petty desire to gather life forms. Mortanius realised before Moebius that nothing on Nosgoth could prepare for the things Earth brought or took from them. I realise now that we needed to be stopped but back then when I was heading out to find Rabbitson and the others, it all still took the form of a mission, just like any other. The repercussions of what took place with us here in Nosgoth would affect our lives for years to come, especially William. His connection with the forces in this world would become something far deeper than we could have guessed. By this point in time, the Time Streams of both our worlds were beyond repair, technically speaking. Mortanius would do what he did in order to salvage what was left of both our worlds but he could have at least warned me first. . .

Mortanius held Doctor John Howe's key card between thumb and finger, scanning over its space-aged circuit-board-like detail embedded inside the translucent card with his white eyes memorising the information upon it. Apparently, it gave him 100 security clearance in the Spencer Estate beneath which was hidden a Mansion in the Arklay mountains. It also it allowed level 4 out of 6 security clearance for another laboratory contained beneath a chemical plant somewhere inside or around 'Raccoon City'. That appeared to be where he was now. Mortanius had travelled through the researchers dimension tunnel and had ended up in a mission control contained within the Chemical Plant inside Raccoon City. Of course he was challenged at first but a flash of John's card he had stolen from him and they allowed him to move freely about the facility, which surprised him at first until he discovered just how much John's security clearance was worth around here. John was apparently a more influential character within this operation that Mortanius had assumed. He wasn't very comfortable with backstabbing his internal agent so soon in the game, but things had already taken a turn towards a sinister plot. He hadn't expected Moebius to arrange for Vorador's capture so soon and if he didn't react quickly then those scientists could pass the preliminary rounds, at which point things would become beyond Mortanius's redemption. If Mortanius were guessing at the plot correctly, Moebius wouldn't give them the version of Kain from this age. At this point in the Time Stream, Kain had travelled back in time along with the Hylden champion in the search of their true destinies, meaning Kain was much beyond the scientist's level of abilities, at least for the time being. No, Moebius would give them a younger Kain, a vulnerable Kain, but a version of Kain he did not have direct access to. There was only one period in the Time Stream Moebius forbid all contact with, and that was the age of the revival of the Sarafan order at the hands of the Sarafan Lord. The reason for this was the this age was still unexamined even to him, a newly formed age as the result of a new and alien choice made at an earlier stage of the Time Stream, no doubt something to do with that Hylden champion and his Freewill.

If they successful completed their trial and took Vorador (needless to say Vorador would be in danger, but he wasn't Mortanius's primary concern) then Moebius would waste no time in allowing them access to this age this vulnerable version of Kain, at which point Mortanius would be unable to stop them. Of course there was still John. If Kain were to be taken from the Sarafan Lord era, then John would no doubt accompany Birkin on the mission and if John trusted Mortanius's view on this, then he'd try to stop them from taking Kain independently of him. If Mortanius's plan here on Earth worked, however, then there would not be an operation to steal Kain, because they would be too busy with his little bombshell to even consider gathering more samples.


	5. Part 4: Moratinuses Trump Card

Mortanius hadn't mentioned it, but finding your was through the dreaded Black Forest of Termagent wasn't as difficult as everyone made out. The path was lit by what was known as the 'Ignis Fatuus', the path to Hell, a trail lit by human skulls mounted on posts with eerie green flames burning silently within the jaws of the all too familiar bone formation. What the Nosgothic people forgot to mention was that Termagent Forest was a swamp. If I got stuck out here. . . sure I could find my way back with the Ignis Fatuus, but I had a sudden horrifying sensation in the pit of my stomach that almost caused me to wretch when I realise that the pathway would be a perfect place for the monsters lurking in the shadows of Nosgoth to attack a human being. I think I didn't grasp until then as to how dangerous Nosgoth was. Humans were at the very bottom of the food chain, death could come at any moment and I was a Human fresh out of a society where there were no natural predators. How would I know what to do if something big and black with lots of legs jumped out on me and tried to suck my brains out? We're all as soft as shit; perfect prey for something used to stubborn, fit, healthy Humans that tended to put up a fight before they died. Other than the arms units we brought with us, all the researchers - though they mostly weren't fat disgusting slobs - probably couldn't face off a slobbering demon.

My god, what was I doing here? If I got a wheel stuck in the swamp soup of mud, weeds and scum floating stagnantly on the surface like a thick skin, then what happened next? I had a gun; a handgun, nothing impressive, just a .25, but that didn't put me at ease. .25 calibre guns could easily kill a Human if you hit them in the right place, but somehow a bullet from an average gun seemed redundant in the face of Vampires and Demons (the stories the Sarafan told made them out to be huge) and I seriously doubted that if I emptied a whole clip into a Vampire, it would be enough to kill one. Suddenly I felt chillingly exposed, all alone in the densely forested swamp with my tender Human soul burning brightly inside the easily shredded casing of my ludicrously weak flesh, undoubtedly a beacon to any ravenous demon with a flare for removing the flesh from the soul imprisoned within. At that moment I hadn't been so aware of my own life force before in my entire life. My breath, my heartbeat, my thoughts, all of it could be probed and examined by some kind of impossible creature dreamt up by the magic of this world. Magic was a far more sinister word that I had originally guessed. . .Maybe the only reason these things existed on Nosgoth and not Earth was because of the abundance of this previously undiscovered force.

The roar of the jeep engine tore through the dense forest like a deep throaty bellow. I didn't want to stop and leave myself open to attack, but I didn't want to keep such a noisy engine running either. I preyed that it wouldn't be too long before I caught up with those idiots before they got themselves killed-

- The radio crackled on the dashboard of the jeep and through it, I heard something that made me sick. Someone from the Raccoon City base was trying to contact me - from the distortion and the static that muffled his voice -

"John?" It was Mortanius. I really wasn't prepared for what happened afterwards. . . I really wasn't. . .

"What do you want?" I barked into the intercom, one hand fumbling with the radio and one with the wheel and my concentration split precariously between the rough terrain and the conversation.

"I'm sorry for abusing your trust, but they must be stopped."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"That 'Tyrant' project you were working on. The one kept dormant in the basement of the Mansion Lab the portal to Nosgoth was in. . ."

My blood ran icy cold. I begged god that he wasn't going to say what I though he was going to say….

"What have you done?"

"I used your security card to grant me access to the part of the laboratory that held it, and I released it. . ."

"You . . .. Oh god, please tell me this is a sick, sick fucking joke. . ." I swear my stomach turned. If you knew that killing machine like I did, you too would fall ill from terror. "Do you have _any_ idea of what that thing is capable of! Why'd you _do_ it!"

"The Researchers need to be stopped, John, and releasing their prized project would keep them occupied long enough to formulate some kind of counter attack to Moebius' plot."

"Yeah-with my fucking security card! They can kill me for this! Umbrella've murdered better scientists than me for absolutely nothing! I trusted you and"-

-Unfortunately, I was too focused on Mortanius' sickeningly selfish act of betrayal to evade the sturdy tree I was coming hard into, and in mere seconds there was a loud crash and I found myself propelled through the windscreen and into the stagnant slop of the forest 'floor'. At the speed I was going, if I had hit solid ground I don't think I might have survived, but landing face first in the foul smelling, rotten soup filled with reeds and muck and slime wasn't a fate much better than death. It was like being thrown in a squelchy, green, stinking sewer full of fucking shit and at that moment in time all I could think of was how much I hated that lying, two-faced, treacherous, back-stabbing son of a bitch Mortanius.

"ARRRGHH!" I screamed into the air with sheer frustration, slapping balled fists into the disgusting sludge I was sitting waist deep in. "I'm gonna fucking kill you, Mortanius!"-

-a bush close by rustled and I fell deathly silent, though the hatred towards Mortanius remained. If a big bastarding monster jumped out of there I was going to go utterly crazy; HE put me in this situation. HE betrayed me. Why did I listen to him? Why did I trust him even for a second? I never trust anyone, normally. . . It must have been those eyes of his. . . cataract over, it was as if the windows to his very soul had been obstructed from my view and as such I had no way of knowing what was going on inside that head of his. . .

The bush stopped moving when I focused my attention on it. Something was in there and not know what it was was driving me slowing insane. I couldn't stand being unenlightened. . . I smiled in relief to myself when I remembered I had placed the handgun inside my lab coat (there were straps and pockets for carrying surgical equipment on the inside of the coats for all the lab workers, but this was a far more inventive use for them), now stained a dirty greenish colour from the slime and snatched at it immediately, the heavy weight of the deadly machinery putting me at ease slightly, making me feel a hell of a lot less vulnerable than I felt moments before. I trained it on the bush, along with my vision. Someone was defiantly in there. It looked about the size of a man, but I didn't want to take my chances and go up to it to shake them out.

"I know someone's in there" I piped up, not wanting to beat about the bush (forgive the pun) "If you come out now with your hands up, I promise I wont hurt you." I wasn't expecting a response. I merely said that to make sure they knew that I knew they were there, so I was taken fair by surprise when a young woman scrambled out into view.

"Please. . . Do not harm me. . ." She pleaded, but from her weak and shaky tone of voice, she didn't much sound like she though it would comply. It was pretty strange to see a woman out here, especially considering the garb she wore: wait high boots, a strange half-skirt that left most of her flawless legs exposed, a white, sleeveless shirt-like cloth draped over her breast, though doing as little as possible to cover them entirely. She was flawlessly beautiful, with long, soft brown head held back by a red hair band. I found it odd that in his swampy place, not a spot of dirt had gotten on her flawless white outfit, but now was not the time to dwell on such details.

"I'm not gonna hurt you." I said as kindly as I could muster. "What are you doing out here?" She didn't reply, only looked down anxiously at her feet. "Okay, you don't have to tell me that, but at least could you tell me if you've seen any others like me? Men in white coats."

"There are others?" She looked up worriedly, fear filling her – what the hell – yellow eyes?

"You have yellow eyes. . ." I stated the obvious. She looked down again. "Sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Did you see any others like m"- but before I finished the sentence, I felt a dark and heavy presence behind me. There was no time to question how I could sense it, but I dived out of the way in time to narrowly avoid the swipe of a clawed fist. Now back half buried in the swamp sludge I could see my attacker. A man wearing similar clothing but on him it looked a lot less provocative.

"You will not harm her, mortal!" He yelled at me, then focused his attention on the nervous woman. "Sarjenka, you must not beg for the humans! Lord Vorador commands it!"

"Forgive me. . ."

"Vorador?" I spoke up. "You guys know that vampire?"

"Of course we do!" Spat the irate man down to me. "Every vampire knows Vorador!"

"Your vampires!" I jumped to my feet and wasted no time in training my gun on him. He gave my handgun a disgruntled look.

"See how he wields the strange weapons those who captured our Lord uses? He is defiantly in league with those strange new Sarafan!"

" 'Capture you Lord'?" I repeated. "You mean Rabbitson and the others actually succeeded!" I then picked up on the other half of what he had said. "Wow, wait; We're no Sarafan."

"You lie!" He spat without hesitation. "Lord Vorador saw one of your kind at the window of the Sarafan Stronghold!" Was he talking about me? I don't remember seeing anything. . .

"We're _not_ Sarafan." I repeated. "We're just a bunch of scientists and we're only following orders"-

-"'Only following orders' is the scapegoat line of all murderers! In the eyes of bureaucracy, it may be your superiors that have committed the misdeed, but in the eyes of god, it was the man whom has the blood on his hands!"

"An ironic statement, coming from a vampire." I argued. The man paused.

"I haven't been a vampire all that long. . ." He explained. "There are still some aspects I have not yet mastered" He was unquestionably referring to his blood lust. "but know this, Sarafan! I am no demon - in fact - I feel the same now as I did as a human!"

"I'm not a god damn Sarafan!" I tried to explain again. This was like talking to a brick wall, and matters weren't helped by the fact that my stodgy clothes covered in slime were starting to chill my body to the very core of its' soul. Why did I believe they would listen? From what I've heard, these vampires – no – these _people_ had been persecuted by humans all their life and they didn't seem all that different from us after all. . .

"You hunt vampires, don't you!" This nonsense again. . .

"I came here to stop the others!"

The man stepped forward, angrily, yet with a quizzical look in his golden eyes. "Ah, but you do not deny they are on the same side as you?"

"Those clowns are only following orders! It's nothing personal!"

" 'Following orders' " The man spat in disgust. "At least _WE_ do not try to shroud our bloodlust in a veil of righteousness!"

" 'Bloodlust'? I repeated in bemusement. "We're just scientists!"

"And that justifies your abduction of our Lord?" He growled.

I decided to meet them halfway. "No, no it doesn't and that's why I'm here to stop them."

"Liar!"

"god. . . " Slowly, an idea formed in my head. I gradually sank down, placing my firearm on the waterlogged 'ground'. "Look, I'm lowering my weapon. If I was trying to hurt you, would I do a thing like that?"

. . . . . yeah . . . I probably shouldn't have done that. . . .

All I remember after dropping my weapon was a sharp and instant pang of pain on the back of my head, then blackness.

William Birkin was in the projector room of the Arklay Laboratory beneath the hidden Mansion deep in the Raccoon Forest that boarded Raccoon City when the alarm system of the labs first blared into soul splitting sound. What was he doing in there? I didn't know this at the time, but he was examining an artefact he had 'recovered' from Nosgoth, and by recovered I mean stolen. William was no ignorant fool. He accepted what he saw – no matter how mind bending it was – because he believed that no matter how bizarre it might seem, striving to understand how it was possible and not blatantly refusing to accept it had happened was the only option he could choose. He had snooped around the Sarafan Stronghold a lot more than any of the Nosgothic inhabitants had cared to realise.

_They_ saw his lab coat and assumed him another of those men that could watch the casting of an honest-to-god spell itself and still deny the existence of magic. William had used this veil of ignorance to his full advantage in order to do some major snooping around, and he must have been damn good at it, too if he had ended up with the artefact he had with him now.

It was Moebiuses hourglass. Now, this may not seem like a big deal to you until I explain to you the significance of this artefact. The nine Pillars of Nosgoth that protect and uphold the land were originally made by vampires. Vampires are magical creatures by their very nature and so did a good job of upholding the laws the Pillar represented. The Pillars – however – had fallen under the guardianship of humans (Pillar guardians are appointed at birth and vampires are no longer born, but transformed from humans) and as you know full well, we humans are not supernatural beings capable of mustering the kind of spells they are required to wield as a Pillar Guardian. Thus, each Pillar had an artefact that acted as a moderator of magical energy between the Pillar and its Guardian. What this means is that though the artefact is worthless in the hands of an ordinary human, it was the source of power for whatever Guardian it was assigned to.

William was no fool. He had heard of this and decided to explore further, taking Moebiuses hourglass for his own research purposes. The primitive common folk of Nosgoth may not be able to unlock its secrets, but surely a learned scientist could find a way of hacking into the power of the Pillar Moebius represented. The hourglass wasn't under any heavy guard when William had found it high up in a tower deep within the Stronghold, assumingly because the Sarafan Stronghold itself was an impregnable fortress so there was little point to monitor it (and apparently it hadn't occurred to the Nosgothic inhabitants to tighten security of that room with the researchers running around) so snatching it had been Childs play.

William had only just managed to secret it away to the projector room when the sirens burst out their defending hymn. William stashed the hourglass away in a draw by the intercom, which he promptly used.

"What the hell is going on? What tripped the alarm?" He barked into it. No reply. He tried again. "If I find out you've been sleeping on the job _again_, I'll have you fired this time!" Still no reply. Odd. That usually livened them up.

Rapidly losing his patience over the incompetence of others - as always – William wasted no time is bursting out of the projector room and marching his way down the corridors as he had done so many times before-

-only he stopped dead in his tracks when the lab alarm ceased abruptly. The alarm had been harsh and soul shattering but strangely enough, this eerie dead silence was far more unnerving. There was something primordially comforting about white noise like that, and with it no longer there to mask his movements William felt horribly exposed.

He caught himself wishing this was a sick joke being played on him by security, and hoped he hadn't, as in the movies, thinking like that often resulted in an ironic death.

The door to the projected room clicked. That was a lock. He was locked out. What the hell was going on?

Footsteps. He could hear footsteps approaching. Defiantly human; William had been in the company long enough to know what his creations sounding like when approaching a target, so he could relax a little; it meant that whoever did this hadn't – for whatever reason - released the MA-121's or 'Hunters' as they were known because if they had, an unarmed scientists like him with no place to run would be proper fucked. But it didn't sound like a scientist. It didn't sound like shoes or sneakers. . . William stayed stock still, waiting for whoever it was to round the corner into his view-

- Red robes and two shoulder spikes. He recognised that look instantly.

"Mortanius!" He barked. The Necromancers head flicked up from concentrating on – whatever it was in his hands, black metal clearly giving it away as a device from our world. He pointed it at William. "Hey!" He said, instinctively raising his palms. "That's my gun!"

Indeed, it was William's handgun; a no frills Browning – the same make as the Raccoon Police Department used, no less. Mortanius had been loading it when he bumped into William. Fortunately for Mortanius but not for William, the scientist wasn't too good with weapons so had chosen a fairly idiot proof gun. For a moment, all William could so was smirk a little at the view he was given: 'Staring down the barrel of a modern killing machine being wielded by an ancient Necromancer.' It was poetic.

"We have pistols in my world," Cautioned Mortanius. "Though with the extent of my power I have little use for one."

"Then why are you using one now?" Said William, trying his best not to sound smart-alecky and failing.

"My power wanes in this world."

"Fair enough."

There was a moment of awkward stalemate.

"What are you doing here?" Asked William.

"John sent me to look for you." Told Mortanius. "Though I am afraid I have betrayed his trust. . ."

"What do you mean?"

As if some divine force had heard him, William was met with a gradual answer.

There was a sound in the distance and yet the fact that it could be heard at all made it all too close for comfort.

_Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

It wasn't footsteps.

_Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

Those could be heard later.

_Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

"The Tyrant!" Hissed William through clenched teeth.

The ultimate result of our T-virus research, the T-002, or Tyrant was considered by many of our men to be the perfect life form. It knew no remorse or pity. It knew no hunger or pain. It never tired. It never stopped. It resembled a man and yet it looked nothing like one. Easily over seven foot tall, it was a distorted blasphemy of what had once been a man. It had grey 'skin' -if it's rough outer layer could truly be called a skin- with red veins running rough it, intersecting at two points; its massively and perversely distorted left appendage that resembles a mess of claws, and its bulbous, external _heart._

_Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

It drew close enough to hear the heavy, relentless pounding of its feet, not that it was stomping, but under the seer weight of its diamond hard muscle it had no choice but to stomp everywhere it went.

"Why did you let it out!" Yelled William, managing to behave surprisingly authoritive despite being on the business end of a loaded weapon.

"It was my trump card." Mortanius confessed as quickly as he could, considering what was heading this way. "To release the most powerful of your creations and to lure it into our world so that you and your associates would be too busy trying to capture it to interfere with my world." So that's why the projector room door had locked; he had accessed the security room and locked down every door except a direct route to the portal. "I stole John's clearance card to do it." Mortanius lowered his weapon. "If you wish to live then you and I must make it to the portal before your little creature does." William nodded in agreement and followed him. There would be plenty of time to argue when they weren't on the flight plan of the ultimate killing beast.


End file.
